LIBRARY OF CONGRESS.' 



Chap, ... Copyright No. 



SheltJ^ 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



THE 



ILLS OF INDIGESTION 

THEIR CAUSES AND THEIR 
CURES 

In Three Essays 

BY 

/ 

HERMAN PARTSCH, M. D. 

Author of a prize work on Seasickness 






NORTH BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA. U 5 

CUMBERNAULD CO., Publishers 

20OI LINCOLN STREET 
1896 




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Vd 



J&&. 



COPYRIGHT, 1896, 

By HERMAN PARTSCH 



ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 



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LC Control Number 




tmp96 028657 



TO MY SON AND DAUGHTER, 

HERMAN DIXON AND CONSTANCE MARY, 

THIS BOOK IS AFFECTIONATELY 

DEDICATED. 



PREFACE. 



In writing this book my object has been to 
put on record certain facts that I have learned 
during the last twenty-five years on topics com- 
prehended under the title of dyspepsia, and to 
make those facts available for the use and relief 
of those whom they most cerncern. 

Dyspepsia is the mother of more ills than it has 
ever received credit for, and the literature of 
medicine has not yet offered the sufferer any 
scientific or practical means of relief; which facts 
constitute my apology for offering this book to 
those who suffer in any manner from any of the 
ills of indigestion. 

I hold little or nothing in common with the 
views generally prevailing on disorders of diges- 
tion. My conclusions will be best judged by the 
results to which they lead in my practice, 
namely, the same certainty of easy success in 
curing every case undertaken as that with which 
a builder undertakes the construction of a house, 

(v) 



VI PREFACE. 

and that regardless of the previous duration of 

the case. 

I have spared no pains in writing and explain- 
ing just what in my judgment the dyspeptic 
needs to know. I have taken no trouble, how- 
ever, as to the mechanical arrangement of my 
material. The index has been omitted as un- 
necessary in this instance, and the table of con- 
tents has been left in the utmost state of brevity. 

I have said little of dyspepsia itself, but I have 
said more of its causes. There are three great 
causes of dyspepsia, and the only rational clas- 
sification of dyspeptics must be made with refer- 
ence to those causes. 

Each cause has a distinct essay separately 
devoted to its discussion, and, towards the close 
of it, the matters of prevention and cure are also 
briefly but sufficiently attended to. In the essay 
on Energy-Diversion Dyspepsia, I have pre- 
sented numerous extracts from the biographies 
of Charles Darwin and Thomas Carlyle, for the 
purpose of sustaining my own argument with 
evidence from these famous sufferers. My ex- 
tracts from Darwin and Carlyle are, perhaps, 
much more numerous than necessary for my 



PREFACE. VI 1 

purpose. But they sustain my views so much 
the better, and they serve the purposes of 
instruction more efficiently than a briefer selec- 
tion would. And, above all, these collections 
of biographic extracts relating to the illnesses of 
these men, are very well worth preservation in 
just the form in which I have arranged them. 

Each of the divisions of the second essay has 
its sections independently numbered, while in 
the first and third essays the sections are con- 
secutively numbered through the two divisions 
into which each essay is divided. 

H. P. 

North Berkeley, Cal. y Nov., i8g6. 



CONTENTS. 



Page. 

Preface ....... 5 

I.— REPETITION DYSPEPSIA. 

On the Causes ..... 9 

On the Manner of Conducting Cases . 63 

II.— ENERGY-DIVERSION DYSPEPSIA. 

Argument ..... 96 

Evidence from Charles Darwin . . 116 

Evidence from Thomas Carlyle . . 189 

On the Manner of Conducting Cases . 263 

III.— STALE-FOOD DYSPEPSIA. 

On the Causes ..... 272 

On the Summer Dyspepsia of Young Children, 324 

( viii ) 



I.— REPETITION DYSPEPSIA. 

ON THE CAUSES. 

1. We are concerned first with a very simple, 
well-known and important principle, upon which 
will depend our understanding of all that needs 
to be said of the class of dyspeptics that will be 
considered in this essay. A due consideration 
of this principle, and a proper understanding of 
its importance, will easily follow a careful show- 
ing of its application in the determination of the 
cause, the cure and the prevention of dyspepsia 
in a large class of cases. I can proceed to best 
advantage by citing from the record on hand a 
" chronic " case of dyspepsia, in which an under- 
standing of the principle clearly led to cause, 
cure and subsequent prevention of the illness to 
date — a period of eight years. 

2. I purposely select an alleged critical case, 
and at the same time one of the very easiest 
cases in which to secure a complete, speedy and 
lasting recovery. The critical element of this 
case, whom I will call Modero, had its existence 
only in the minds, as usual, of Modero himself, 
his friends and his physicians. That the case 

(9) 



IO REPETITION DYSPEPSIA. 

was not at all critical when understood and 
properly conducted was proven by the simplic- 
ity and the complete success of the treatment by 
which Modero got entirely well. 

3. The particulars of the case are as follows: 
On the Pacific Mail Steamship Granada, on the 
twenty-eighth day of March, 1888, I was 
approached by Modero on the subject of his 
own illness. He was an Italian, fifty-three years 
of age, seafaring man until about 1878, since 
then capitalist residing in San Francisco. And 
the use of him, as an example for purposes of 
demonstration, is my compensation for the serv- 
ices rendered in the case. At this time Modero 
weighed one hundred and fifty pounds. Six 
months previously his weight had been two hun- 
dred and ten pounds. 

During the autumn of 1887, Modero was sick 
in San Francisco and at various times in the care 
of three doctors. Failing to restore him to 
health, the doctors advised Modero to make a 
voyage to Central America; and he sailed in 
November. His health was not improved by 
the voyage, nor by his stay in San Salvador, 
where his case was attempted by a fourth phy- 
sician. During the four and one-half months 
since leaving San Francisco, he had grown 
steadily worse, and was gradually losing weight, 
and while in San Salvador he became so ill and 



ON TH£ CAUSES. II 

helpless as to require the assistance of his wife to get 
him back to San Francisco. She was telegraphed 
for, and in the course of time arrived, and was 
bringing him home when I met him on the 
Granada. Modero had been informed by his 
doctors that his illness consisted of dyspepsia, so 
he told me ; and such proved to be the case. At 
the time of our meeting he had been ill about 
six months, and during the last four of these 
months, he had suffered constant pain within, 
and had had constant diarrhea. During the 
same four months, he was decidedly sick, had no 
appetite, and ate very little. He had lost sixty 
pounds of his weight and had yet one hundred 
and fifty pounds left. The loss representing two- 
sevenths of his normal weight. 

4. Seeing that I was interested in his case, 
and knowing that at the rapid rate of his decline 
he could not last many weeks longer, he said he 
would make me a " handsome present " if I cured 
him. I undertook the study and conduct of his 
case on the 28th of March, 1888. It soon 
appeared that the case was indigestion and 
nothing more. Up to April 5 improvement had 
been gradual, certain and considerable, excepting 
one very slight relapse. On April 5 I promised 
Modero complete recovery. On April 9 he 
disembarked at San Francisco sound and well. 
He soon regained his normal weight, and has 



12 REPETITION DYSPEPSIA. 

been well during the eight years since that time. 
(The " handsome present" did not materialize.) 
Modero's case has been selected as an example, 
because it was one of those extreme cases which 
are likely to result fatally. And I have cited 
his case in detail to show the easy practicability 
of speedy, complete and lasting recovery. And 
this case has been selected also because it sup- 
plies a very plain and clear instance of the 
operation of the principle which leads us to the 
means of effectually curing and preventing a very 
large share of the ills of indigestion, regardless of 
previous duration or treatment of the cases. 

5. At the time I undertook Modero's case he 
was subsisting exclusively on arrowroot, sugar 
and water, and had been so living for some 
weeks. This was because any other articles of 
food, in the opinions of his physicians and him- 
self, aggravated his illness. No further exami- 
nation was made than so far as to elicit the 
manner of his living then, and back to the 
inception of his illness. And nothing further 
was necessary to be known. The manner of 
Modero's living contained an error which was 
quite sufficient to account for his illness. The 
very simple and elusive little error in Modero's 
living consisted of eating sugar, under the cir- 
cumstances that he ate it. This will be made 
clearer later on. 



ON THE CAUSES. 1 3 

The treatment of the case consisted in de- 
priving the patient of sugar, as such, alto- 
gether. The issuing, limiting and varying his 
meals were all non-essential and unimportant 
details of the management of the case. The 
sugar was stopped, his pain ceased, and so did 
his diarrhea. He was then in an advanced 
stage of starvation, and had to be fed with care 
and with regard for the temptation to overeating 
under such circumstances. 

During the first two days, he ate and drank at 
intervals of two to three hours. No item of food 
was repeated on the same day. The quantity of 
food or drink at each time was small during 
these two days, and was increased thereafter in 
proportion to the improvement of the patient in 
general and his stomach in particular. The rule 
observed referred not so much to what he ate, 
but required that the meal should consist only 
of a single item of food for two days, and that 
thereafter the transition to two and three or more 
items be gradual. The quantities taken at each 
time were to be very small at first, not to exceed 
a tablespoonful during the first two days, and the 
increase to be very gradual. It was also required 
that all foods be fresh, or freshly from the stove. 
Modero rapidly made a recovery that was com- 
plete and enduring. 

6. I gladly let Modero pass now with only 



14 REPETITION DYSPEPSIA. 

some necessary references to his case for the 
purpose of demonstrating the application of the 
principle by which his illness and recovery and 
subsequent immunity from the ills of indigestion 
are accounted for. Modero's case is typical of a 
large class of dyspeptic cases, and I pass now 
from matters concerning Modero in particular, 
to matters concerning the class of cases in gen- 
eral. And when any point in Modero's case is 
again alluded to it will be because that point is 
applicable to the class of cases in general. 

7. There are a few articles of food which, in 
the subsistence of many persons, occur one, two 
or several of them, three times a day. These 
are almost certain to be sugar, milk and butter; 
one, two, or all three in an individual case. In 
speaking of sugar, milk and butter as foods, we 
must distinguish between these materials used as 
such and used in cooking as a constituent of a 
complex something else. In referring to sugar, 
milk and butter as under some circumstances 
causes of indigestion, I mean that sugar, milk 
and butter which are added to foods after cook- 
ing — the sugar from the sugar bowl, the milk 
from the milk pitcher, the butter from the 
butter dish. Just as the error in his living 
caused the illness of Modero and was quite 
competent to cause his death, so the error in 
another dyspeptic's case may be the use of milk, 



ON THE CAUSES. 1 5 

or butter, or any other item of food used under 
similar circumstances. And in some cases two 
or more such errors are combined. 

8. The animal mechanism, with all its appara- 
tuses and with all its processes, mechanical, 
physical, chemical, nervous, and even mental, is 
so nearly automatic that one is strongly tempted 
to believe it is quite so.* It appears that any proc- 
ess, mechanical, physical, chemical, or nervous, 
takes place only in response to some stimulus. 
A stimulus is related to the occurrences with 
which it is associated very much as a railway 
engineer is related to the engine and train. He 
causes the train to move, but the cause of the 
train's movement does not lie in the engineer. 
The content of the bowel serves as the stimulus 
in response to which the bowel sends it along, 
in just the same way as water is sent along a 
horse's gullet, as may be observed when he is 
drinking. Every physiological event depends, 
not only upon its cause, but also upon some 
other event which serves as the stimulus in 
response to which its cause is set in operation 
and its occurrence takes place. The presence 
of food in the stomach serves as the stimulus in 
response to which the appropriate processes of 
digestion take place. But it happens sometimes 

*See Huxley's "On the Hypothesis that Animals are 
Automata, and its History." 



1 6 REPETITION DYSPEPSIA. 

that an event which ordinarily serves as a 
stimulus will fail to serve as such. And it is 
the circumstances and conditions of such failure 
— the reasons for it — that are very usefully inter- 
esting to the class of dyspeptics whom this essay 
specially concerns. Let us first observe some 
instances showing when an event will, and when 
it w r ill not, serve as a stimulus. 

9. The sounds, scenes and meaning of a w r ell- 
performed opera, or any theatrical play, taken 
as a complex whole, serve as a stimulus in re- 
sponse to which a correspondingly complex set 
of pleasing sensations merges into the con- 
sciousness of the person attending. If a person 
attend repeated performances of the same play 
in close succession, the performance will lose its 
efficiency as a stimulus in proportion to the 
extent that the person's attendance on the play 
is repeated. The set of pleasing sensations, that 
merged into consciousness at the first attendance, 
becomes less and less pleasing, and may sooner 
or later become tiresome and even disgusting. 
When Mark Twain heard "for the first time the 
famous Alpine jodel in its own native wilds, it 
was very pleasant and inspiriting to hear." 
Twain says: "Now the jodler appeared, — a 
shepherd boy of sixteen, — and in our gladness 
and gratitude we gave him a franc to jodel some 
more. So he jodeled, and we listened. We 



ON THK CAUSKS. 1 7 

moved on, presently, and he generously jodeled 
us out of sight. After about fifteen minutes we 
came across another shepherd boy, who was 
jodling, and gave him half a france to keep it up. 
He also jodeled us out of sight. After that, we 
found a jodler every ten minutes; we gave the 
first one eight cents, the second one six cents, the 
third one four, the fourth one a penny, contrib- 
uting nothing to numbers five, six, and seven, 
and during the remainder of the day hired the 
rest of the jodlers, at a franc apiece, not to jodel 
any more. There is somewhat too much of this 
jodling in the Alps." * 

So it is, more or less, with sights, sounds, 
recitals. Cheerfully paying for them under 
some circumstances, we would as willingly pay 
to be excused from them under some other cir- 
cumstances. But we should bear in mind that 
any event of this kind loses its efficiency as a 
stimulus only when its repetition exceeds a certain 
degree of frequency. A drug, a medicine, a 
poison, a beverage, a food, each, upon entering 
the animal body, serves as a stimulus in response 
to which some physiological event, or series of 
events, follows. And each stimulus of this, as 
of any other kind, has its peculiar period; a time 
short of which it should not be repeated, if it is 



*And of the whistling nuisance everywhere in the 
United States of America. 



1 8 REPETITION DYSPEPSIA. 

expected to retain its efficiency as a stimulus. 
That drugs, medicines, and especially poisons, 
by frequent or continued injestion, cease to be 
followed by the effects that attended their first 
ingestion, is familiar to every observer. 

10. Within ourselves a cause does not seem to 
operate to produce an effect, except in response 
to some event as a stimulus. The importance 
of the stimulating event therefore becomes plain; 
so does its relation to the cause and effect with 
which it is associated. Certain effects within us 
must take place in order to maintain health and 
vigor. But some such effects sometimes fail to 
occur, because the stimulating event fails to serve 
as a stimulus. Illness then to some extent is 
the result. Water or food in the horse's gullet 
serves as the stimulus in response to which the 
gullet moves that food or water along into the 
stomach. The material in the intestine serves as 
a stimulus in response to which the intestine 
moves its content along. Food in the stomach 
serves as a stimulus in response to which that 
food is digested. And each event in the process 
of digestion serves as the stimulus in response 
to which the next event in the regular order of 
succession takes place. Attempting to subsist 
upon meals precisely alike three times a day 
would be imposing upon the stomach and in- 
testine the same stimulus repeatedly. And the 



ON THK CAUSES. 1 9 

time soon comes when that stimulus ceases to 
serve as ^uch, and the stomach and intestine do 
not respond. Whatever else occurs during 
digestion, one thing is certain, a preliminary 
part of the process consists in so sterilizing the 
material that it does not rot. If this preliminary 
sterilization fails to take place, the content of 
the stomach, and of the intestine to some extent, 
will be rotting within fifteen to twenty minutes 
from the time it is taken in; or it will be rotting 
immediately if any part of it is stale, or infected, 
which is very frequently the case with sugar, 
milk, butter and cold dishes in general during 
warm weather. 

11. So it is that indigestion may and does 
result from monotony of diet. And to this 
cause a large share of all the ills of indigestion 
is attributable. Indigestion means just what it 
says. The foods are more or less imperfectly or 
incompletely digested; that is all. Food can 
not long remain what it is at the time of entering 
the stomach; because it is in the presence of 
heat, moisture and air. In plain English, if the 
food is not soon digested, it soon rots. More 
elegantly stated, it ferments. And by the proc- 
esses of rotting or fermentation the food only 
undergoes changes. A knowledge of the nature 
of these changes can not aid the dyspeptic 
toward recovery, and is therefore omitted here. 



20 REPETITION DYSPEPSIA. 

But I want my dyspeptic readers to have a 
practically sufficient idea of the extent and radi- 
cal character of these changes. So I will say 
that the rotting, for example, of meat or eggs in 
the stomach changes these materials as much, 
and to an equal extent, as when they rot anywhere 
else. And as the mass of food in the digestive 
canal is often a very heterogeneous conglomera- 
tion of good things which it may be a pleasure to 
receive, it is capable of conversion to an equally 
heterogeneous conglomeration of very bad things, 
as a further examination will show. I need not 
go far into the details of the changes and the 
resulting products, but I must go into the sub- 
ject far enough to show the sources and causes 
of pain in indigestion, and what useful intelli- 
gence should be derived from their occurrence. 

12. Among the constituents of the resulting 
rotted mass are some that are poisonous and 
sufficient to account for the illness of the person 
in whose digestive canal the rotting takes place. 
Some of the products are gaseous and account 
for the eructations, the bloating, and sometimes 
painful distension of the stomach and bowels. 
Some of the products, gaseous and liquid, are 
irritating and cause pain by irritation. This irri- 
tating quality is understood by the sufferer who 
has gaseous eructations, for they are often pain- 
fully irritating. So we see that the special pains 



ON THE CAUSES. 21 

of indigestion are due to irritation and distension. 
And the general illness of the sufferer is due, 
firstly to the general demoralizing effects of the 
pain; secondly, to absorption into his circulation 
of some part of some of the poisonous products 
of decomposition which make him ill as other 
poisons would. 

13. According to nature's rule, the food enter- 
ing the stomach serves as the stimulus in response 
to which digestion begins in the stomach and 
ends down in the bowel. But in the case of an 
exception to the rule the food does not serve as 
the usual stimulus, and it is not digested, but is 
decomposed into an utterly different mess, which 
differs from the original as much as a rotten egg 
differs from a fresh one. This converted mess 
serves as a stimulus in response to which a series 
of events takes place quite different from those 
of digestion. And just what this series of events 
is, is immaterial to my purpose. Some points, 
however, in this connection must not be over- 
looked. 

14. Sometimes indigestion is accompanied or 
followed by diarrhea, and the two are so asso- 
ciated that when the indigestion is cured t^e 
diarrhea is cured also. The two were so asso- 
ciated in the case of Modero. This was what 
made his case so critical and cost him in a short 
time two-sevenths of his weight. When Modem's 



22 REPETITION DYSPEPSIA. 

sugar was stopped, his indigestion was stopped, 
so was his consequent illness and the resulting 
diarrhea. The relation of diarrhea to indi- 
gestion is one of the details of our subject that 
is worth knowing well and remembering. This 
diarrhea is not amenable to medical treatment. 
Doctors always give medicine for it, and often it 
is cured, but not by the medicine. The cure, 
apparently by medicine, results as follows: The 
patient is given an opiate to the extent that he is 
saturated with the poison, and is made sick, and 
his appetite suspended to such an extent that he 
omits much of his usual food; and with the 
omitted portion is something that rotted and set 
up decomposing changes in everything else he 
ate, as one rotting potato infects another. What 
causes the diarrhea is one or more of the prod- 
ucts of decomposition serving as purgatives in 
the same way as purgative drugs do. So we see 
that diarrhea is one event that may occur in 
response to the decomposed mass as a stimulus. 
15. Sometimes another event, in response to 
the decomposing mass as a stimulus, is nausea; 
and this is sometimes still further attended by 
retching. Of this I need only say that some 
one or more constituents of the decomposition 
products serve as stimuli in response to which 
nausea and retching occur. Whatever this prod- 
uct, or combination of products, is, its action is 



ON THK CAUSES. 23 

just like that of a drug which in the stomach or 
circulation would serve to cause a like result. 

16. Nausea and retching are caused sometimes 
in connection with cases of indigestion, in a very 
different way from the one just cited. Nausea 
and retching do not always attend indigestion, 
and when they do, it may not necessarily be 
attributable to any nauseating constituent of the 
decomposed food. Nausea and retching are 
sometimes due to the alarm and anxiety caused 
by the pain that attends indigestion and rotting 
of food in the digestive canal, just as they are 
often due to alarm and anxiety attending other 
pains or painful manifestations of the person him- 
self, or the sight or citation of painful manifesta- 
tions on the part of others with whom one is in 
sympathy. 

17. Retching is not understood; and as it is 
so often and so intimately associated with indi- 
gestion, it would seem to me improper to omit a 
practical explanation of it. Retching is of such 
alarming aspect to most persons that it becomes 
very desirable and useful to know how to treat 
it rationally. I will, therefore, for general rea- 
sons, explain the process, its purpose, and how 
the knowledge of it may be utilized in the con- 
duct of cases in which retching occurs. An 
acceptable explanation of retching under all 
circumstances was given in my book on Sea- 



24 REPETITION DYSPEPSIA. 

sickness, sections 84 to 92. The same explana- 
tion in these pages will be given more briefly. 

18. Whether caused by drug or decomposition 
product, or by anxiety or alarm concerning one's 
self, or incidental to sympathy with others in pain, 
the first inferable step in the short series of events 
which ends in retching, is a disturbance of the 
circulation of the blood, preceding which is a 
disturbance of the heart and blood-vessels, and 
back of this again is a disturbance in the work- 
ing of the system of nerves (the vaso-nervous 
system) that attends and regulates the operation 
of the heart and blood-vessels, and therefore the 
circulation of the blood. And back of this 
nervous disturbance is the first cause of the 
retching. This first cause is exceedingly varia- 
ble and assumes many forms. Any reader knows 
from what great variety of first causes retching 
may proceed. This simply means that the vaso- 
nervous system is a very sensitive and delicate 
department of our anatomy, and is subject to 
disturbance from many causes. 

19. One detail of the function of the vaso- 
nervous system is to maintain a proper degree of 
blood pressure, which varies in accordance with 
local and general influences and needs. This 
variable degree of blood pressure is maintained 
by the elastic contractile force of the blood-vessel 
under the influence of the vaso-nerves. Now 



ON THE CAUSKS. 25 

any event which disturbs this set of nerves must 
by consequence disturb the circulation of the 
blood. Whatever the whole effect of a disturb- 
ance of the circulation may be, I neither know, 
nor care to inquire; but, one effect that can, 
beyond all doubt, be inferred, and may even be 
observed, is arterial relaxation, or the relaxation 
of arterial tension. Vessels traversing bones can 
relax but little, if at all. Vessels traversing mus- 
cular tissue cannot relax a great deal on account 
of outside support. Vessels in the abdominal 
cavity, traversing the mesentery, omentum, and 
walls of the stomach and intestine, have the 
least outside support, and therefore can relax a 
great deal. When the vaso-nervous system is 
functionally disturbed, the vessel walls and arte- 
rial tension are relaxed, and by virtue of such 
relaxation the vessels in the abdominal cavity 
become distended whenever the amount of blood 
in them and proper to them is increased by addi- 
tional quantities settling down from higher levels. 
20. Any considerable increase in a short time 
of the quantity of blood in the abdominal cavity, 
when due to arterial relaxation, must be accom- 
panied by a diminution of the quantity of blood 
in vessels at higher levels. And such diminution 
must under such circumstances occur in the 
brain whenever the head is in any position above 
the level of trie abdominal cavity, particularly in 



26 REPETITION DYSPEPSIA. 

the sitting and standing positions. In the re- 
cumbent position without a pillow, general arte- 
rial relaxation may occur from any cause which 
will functionally disturb the vaso-nervous system, 
and there will occur no physiological violence 
that the subject will be conscious of. But in the 
recumbent position with the head elevated on a 
pillow, and much more so in the sitting and 
standing positions, a functional disturbance of 
the vaso-nervous system is followed by vascular 
relaxation; next by an excess of blood in the 
abdominal vessels and a corresponding deficiency 
of blood in the brain. This mechanical deficiency 
of blood in the brain is the one and only serious 
result of vascular relaxation ; and so serious is 
it that nature does not allow it to continue more 
than a very few seconds. Nausea is the sensa- 
tion attending this state of things. 

21. The process by which nature promptly 
corrects a mechanical deficiency of blood in the 
brain is called retching or vomiting. It should 
only be called retching. The regurgitation of 
food is not essential to the process, and in some 
persons never occurs. Retching goes on rather 
more persistently when there is no food in the 
stomach, and sometimes continues persistently 
long after the stomach has been emptied, show- 
ing that the emptying of the stomach is not the 
object of the process. The stomach has nothing 



ON THK CAUSKS. 27 

to do with retching. It is only passively impli- 
cated, when at all, in a way that is purely 
incidental. The process of retching is entirely 
involuntary, and consists essentially of inflation 
of the lungs, closure of the glottis, and simulta- 
neous contraction of those muscles of the chest 
and abdomen that will cause compression of their 
contents. The pressure thus effected, acting upon 
the blood-vessels in the chest and abdomen, and 
therefore upon the blood in them, forces a part 
of that blood upwards into the vessels of the 
head. This flooding of the brain with blood is 
always the object of retching. And retching 
never occurs except in response to a condition 
of things in which there is either an actual 
mechanical deficiency of blood in the brain, or 
the blood is very poor in nutritive material. 

22. Retching, then, is to be avoided by avoid- 
ing its first causes. This, however, is not always 
practicable. But, being subjected to the opera- 
tion of any such first cause of disturbance of the 
circulation, it is generally practicable to lie down 
without a pillow, or only a thin pillow, and by 
thus keeping the head at no higher level than 
the abdominal cavity, maintain a position which 
does not permit the occurrence of a deficiency in 
the brain by gravitation of blood to the relaxed 
vessels of the abdomen. Thus we can success- 
fully either prevent or correct a mechanical defi- 



28 REPETITION DYSPEPSIA. 

ciency of blood in the brain and its correspond- 
ing sensation of nausea, and the retching by 
which nature floods the brain with blood. The 
retching that is due to poverty of blood, in 
respect of nutritive material, will not altogether 
subside in the recumbent position, although it 
becomes less violent. Retching from such cause 
must be treated by recumbent position and satu- 
rating the blood with nutritive material, by eating 
and drinking, a little at a time and often. 

23. To complete my explanation, I should 
speak of fainting, although this phenomenon 
rarely keeps company with the ills of indigestion. 
In fainting we have the most extreme degree of 
what I have explained. A disturbance of the 
circulation, relaxation of the abdominal vessels, 
diminution of the brain's share of blood, all so 
sudden and extensive that not enough blood is 
left in the brain for the performance of its func- 
tions. For this reason the brain's part of the 
function of retching can not be performed. But 
a more prompt and effective procedure takes 
place. The person so falls, if allowed to, that 
the head is brought to the same level with the 
abdomen. The brain then soon gets its share of 
blood, and the fainting spell is soon ended. 

24. The nutritive materials of the foods we 
digest find their way into the circulating blood, 
by and from which they are distributed to vari- 



ON THK CAUSES. 29 

ous localities for the purposes of structure, and 
retrograde change for the production of heat and 
muscular, nervous, mental, and vital energies. 
The blood is rich or poor in respect of nutritive 
materials, according to whether we are well fed 
or ill fed, or have recently or not recently eaten. 
The sensation of hunger is present with, and is 
proportional to, the poverty of blood at any time 
during health. Hunger is the stimulus in re- 
sponse to which we eat. Of the foods that are 
available, we observe that there are some that we 
want and some that we do not want. The indi- 
vidual also observes in his experience that some 
foods have been transposed from the class not 
wanted to the class wanted and vice versa. 
Many an individual also observes in his own 
experience some one or more foods which he 
wants but which he says do not agree with him, 
and that some or all of these foods have agreed 
with him at some former time. He may also 
have found that some foods agree or disagree 
according to the circumstances under which he 
takes them. One with such experience is "pre- 
disposed" to suffer from indigestion, but it would 
be more strictly true to say he is disposed to 
err in his method of subsistence. 

25. In this land of plenty in great variety, in 
this "age of cans," when the products of each 
particular season are preserved for use through- 



30 REPETITION DYSPEPSIA. 

out the year, we choose to make our board of 
what we like; and choose from a multitude of 
materials each as good as the other so far as our 
needs are concerned. Why we select from 
among food materials, why we habitually employ 
some and habitually exclude others, may be due 
to convenience or accidental habit or both. The 
man who never, directly nor indirectly, has 
trouble with his digestive apparatus, eats and 
drinks in a manner proper to his individual self. 
His intuition guides him perfectly. The man to 
whom the ills of indigestion are personally un- 
known, shows by his example how easy it is to 
enjoy perfect immunity from such ills. The 
dyspeptic, however, can not generally follow the 
example of such a one, and enjoy equally good 
health, and thereby hangs a question which, 
with a few others, constitutes the subject upon 
which both dyspeptics and those who undertake 
to cure them have long sought light. On selec- 
tion of foods, on natural preferences and unnat- 
ural or acquired preferences, I might attempt 
some discussion. But nothing practical would 
be gained by doing so. Any definition as to 
what selection scientifically is or is not, would 
cut no figure in the relief of a suffering dyspeptic. 
Therefore I am glad to pass on, even without a 
definition. Selection there is, and it concerns the 
dyspeptic to an extent and in a way that he has 
not been aware of. 



ON THE CAUSES. 3 1 

26. The power of selecting foods has its ori- 
gin in nervous tissue, that tissue which is the 
material concomitant of mind — not the mind, 
but simply mind. Mental phenomena have their 
origin in nervous tissue, but not exclusively 
within the human skull. Nor is mind the exclu- 
sive property of man, nor even of the higher 
vertebrate animals. Animals very low in the 
scale of nervous development have mind enough, 
by whatever other name it may be called, to select 
materials suitable for their subsistence, and to 
reject what is unsuitable. There is some reason 
for concluding that, in the case of man, the phe- 
nomena of mind do not belong exclusively 
within the skull. And there are circumstances 
which seem to indicate that he has mind in 
the abdominal cavity, in that nervous tissue 
which controls the stomach. Enough mind to 
serve well the purposes of the stomach in accept- 
ing and operating upon suitable foods imposed 
upon it, and in letting strictly alone such foods 
as are not suitable. And the stomach does let 
foods severely alone under some circumstances. 
The selection of an item of food, we are accus- 
tomed to think, emanates exclusively from some 
particular locality in the brain; and it emanates 
far enough from its source to merge into con- 
sciousness. I will designate and afterwards 
refer to this as the conscious selection, to distin- 



32 REPETITION DYSPEPSIA. 

guish it from an unconscious power of selection 
and rejection which is assumed to have its origin 
in the nervous tissue controlling the digestive 
apparatus. 

27. For assuming that there is a power of 
selection residing in the nervous tissue of the 
stomach, and separately and independently of the 
power of selection residing in the brain, reasons 
will appear which I believe will leave little doubt 
as to the propriety of the assumption. But no 
such reasons could be apparent, it seems to me, 
if the stomach's choice always coincided with the 
head'schoice. It does generally so coincide. The 
exceptional cases, cases in which head and stom- 
ach differ as to choice, furnish us with some 
instruction that is very important to dyspeptics. 
In the matter of selection there must be harmony 
between head and stomach, or else there is dys- 
pepsia. We all know what it is to like or dislike 
particular articles of food. And we know what 
it is to dislike foods at first and then like them 
later, and to like them at first and dislike them 
later. The head and stomach have each and 
separately the power of selection and rejection 
in respect of an article of food. 

28. When we eat foods unwillingly, such as 
we do not like, we may say that the choice of the 
head is against them. But if they are vigorously 
digested, we may say that the choice of the 



ON THK CAUSES. 33 

stomach is for them. When we eat foods that 
we like, we may say that the head is for them; 
but if they are not digested, we may say that the 
stomach is against them; except in such cases as 
are considered in my second and third essays. 
The choice of the head is for an article of food 
when we like it, and is against that article when 
we dislike it. The choice of the stomach is for 
an article of food when it digests it vigorously, 
and is against an article when it will not digest 
it vigorously, other conditions being favorable. 
In respect of some articles always, and other 
articles sometimes, the head and stomach may 
be neither for nor against, but rather neutral. 
And all other possible degrees of preference and 
repugnance in regard to various food articles are 
observable in connection alike with head and 
stomach. The same food article which is at one 
time an object of choice may become an object 
of disgust, and vice versa, to the head alone, or 
to the stomach alone, or to both simultaneously, 
and to the same or different degrees. This 
theory, of the powers of selection and rejection 
belonging individually and separately both to 
head and stomach, might have been omitted 
altogether, were it not for cases in which an 
article of food that an individual likes and 
chooses does not agree* with him, the same 

*Aman will say, for example, honey does not agree 
with him. He should say his stomach does not agree 
with him in choosing honey. 3 



34 REPETITION DYSPEPSIA. 

material being used as food by others who easily 
digest it under apparently the same circum- 
stances as the one fails to digest it. 

29. I have already shown that we are subject 
to a very general law which may be expressed 
as follows: Any stimulus, when applied to our- 
selves in excess of a certain maximum degree of 
frequency, ceases to serve as a stimulus. A 
stimulus, we have already hinted, is any substance 
or any event, or any detail of any procedure, 
which in any way affects any part of the nervous 
system of an individual. A stimulus affects the 
nervous system, and therefore the person, through 
any of the nervous avenues by which the inner 
man is consciously or unconsciously influenced 
by the outer world. The degree of frequency 
below which an event will serve as a stimulus 
and above which it will not serve as a stimulus, 
is mainly a peculiarly individual or personal 
matter, and is variable according to circum- 
stances, as will appear more plainly farther on. 
This degree of frequency is in the main indef- 
inite, indeterminate, and of little practical use 
generally. But on this point a practically impor- 
tant personal question does often occur relative 
to that class of stimuli known as foods. 

The vital processes of the inner man continue 
to go on. They take place in response to the 
proper stimuli of the outer world. Any stimu- 



ON THE CAUSES. 35 

lus may and must be repeated, but not to exceed 
a certain maximum degree of frequency. Other- 
wise the inner man will not respond, and a 
necessary procedure will fail to take place, and 
discord and violence will result within. 

We do not become seriously concerned with 
the question of the degree of frequency with 
which we can listen to repetitions of the same 
grand oration, or witness repetitions of the same 
grand opera, or see repetitions of the same per- 
formance of the same clever clown, but we are 
often seriously concerned with the question of 
the degree of frequency with which an article of 
food may be imposed upon the digestive appa- 
ratus. Theoretically there would seem to be no 
difficulty with this question. There ought to be 
none. Practically it is the want of the solution 
of this question that serves as a bar between 
good health and many a sufferer from indiges- 
tion. The law previously expressed implies a 
very important command which all are bound to 
observe or suffer the penalty. It is a command 
of one word, change. The intelligent community 
in general, and of course the doctor in particular, 
claim to know this; if they do, I can have no 
apology for writing these pages. 

30. The subject of the degree of frequency 
with which an article of food may be ingested 
presents itself: In the case of the individual who 



36 REPETITION DYSPEPSIA. 

is possessed of a constant natural or acquired 
fondness for articles of food that are continually 
available — butter, sugar, and milk, for examples; 
in the case of the individual on a voyage or ex- 
pedition or otherwise in a situation with supply 
sufficient but variety insufficient and change im- 
practicable; in the case of the individual who, 
from poverty or neglect or choice, does not 
avail himself of variety and change; in the case of 
the individual who has little or no desire to eat, 
is lying in bed expending no energy, perhaps, 
and does not need to take more than a little food, 
but who, nevertheless, is persistently urged to 
take milk in large and oft-repeated quantities, 
aggregating enough for a man at hard labor, — in 
such cases it may often be observed that milk is 
given constantly and monotonously, regardless 
of the law of change. Although a patient may 
like milk, his stomach may not, and often does 
not like it after a few days. Then the stomach, 
tired of milk, refuses to handle it. The milk 
then simply rots, and the patient suffers from 
indigestion superimposed, by his physician's 
advice, upon the ills he already has. It does not 
require much hospital observation to convince 
one that this monotonous milk diet (regardless 
of patient's consent) is responsible for a great 
deal of indigestion, starvation, and the premature 
death of many patients. Indigestion is not only 



ON THE CAUSES. 37 

superimposed upon other ills, but indigestion 
itself is very often treated by imposing more 
illness of the same kind. 

31. Suppose one were to attend theater each 
week for a long time, and that each week a new 
play is presented, differing from all the preceding 
with the exception of one conspicuous detail, 
which remains common to all the plays. It will 
generally be conceded by most of us that we 
would become very tired of that detail. Its 
repetition would for some of us even spoil the 
whole play; and still more, it would serve as a 
stimulus in response to which some of us would 
fall into that state of mental ill health known by 
the name of disgust, wmich itself might, in not a 
few cases, be followed by other perturbations of 
the inner man more obscure and less definite. 
There are many persons in whose morning, 
noon and evening meals, however these may be 
varied from day to day or week to week, there 
are regularly and constantly present three, two, 
or at least one detail. And thereby hangs the 
secret of a great deal of suffering. 

The articles of food that are very generally 
found to be so repeated are sugar, milk and 
butter, and less frequently, bread, coffee and tea. 
Several other articles are, in individual cases, 
regularly repeated in too close succession. 
Fancy sugar, milk and butter, one, two or all 



38 REPETITION DYSPEPSIA. 

three, put into the stomach three times every 
day in one, two, three or more years! And 
aside from uses as foods they are also very much 
used merely for the pleasure of eating them; and, 
in the form of additions to less palatable foods, 
they are employed as contrivances for enabling 
the individual to eat more than is necessary. 

Of the three classes into which I find dyspep- 
tics divisible, one large class owes its indigestion 
wholly to the regular repetition at each meal of 
one or more items of food. The stomach gets 
tired of this regular tri-daily repetition of these 
details prolonged into years, just as the head 
gets tired and disgusted with repetitions to the 
eye and ear. 

It is a strange part of our subject that we so 
far misunderstand our digestive apparatus that 
w r e like and eat what it does not like and will not 
handle, the article of food involved being gen- 
erally one which both w T e and our stomachs had 
originally agreed on liking. We have not tired 
of its tri-daily repetition for a year or more, but 
our stomach has tired of it, is disgusted with it, 
and will not handle it. 

32. What other inferences than these can be 
drawn from such cases as Modero's? Modero 
was fifty-three years of age, had eaten sugar in 
the ordinary way during all of an active out-of- 
door life, during which he had no personal knowl- 



ON THE CAUSES. 39 

edge of the meaning of illness. But, after ten years 
of the physically inactive life of a rich man re- 
tired from hard work, he becomes ill from cause 
to him unknown, has constant pain in the digest- 
ive canal, and has constant diarrhea, until, in six 
months, he finds himself reduced from two hun- 
dred and ten to one hundred and fifty pounds, 
has run the gauntlet of four regular doctors, 
taken medicines, and a long sea voyage; all of 
which resulted in no good whatever. He was 
able to undertake his voyage alone, but unable 
to return without aid. He was being brought 
home with only the straw of hope that a dying 
man will cling to. His diet had been narrowed 
down to arrowroot and sugar. His sugar was 
stopped, and then his pain and diarrhea stopped 
on their own account. He was treated for a few 
days as if he were the hero of a forty-days' fast, 
then he was allowed to eat and drink anything 
and everything he pleased. 

Modero's case is typical of a large class of 
cases; that is why I have made an example of 
him. What was achieved in his case can be 
done in all cases less serious than his. But, 
strange as it may seem, those cases which in the 
estimation of doctors in general present the 
least hope of recovery, cases which are tiresome 
to doctors, and whom the country doctor sends 
to the city, and the city doctor sends to the 



4-0 REPETITION DYSPEPSIA. 

springs, cases that have exhausted all the reputed 
means of relief and are relegated to the category 
of the manifestly incurable, are the cases in which 
it is easiest to find the error of their living and 
to correct it. Modero's case illustrates this. 
Recovery and restoration to health will always 
take care of themselves when the fundamental 
error is corrected. By comparison we can see 
that Modero's case must have been more difficult 
to understand, so far as causes were concerned, 
during the first month of his illness than it was 
during the last month. For at the inception of 
his illness he was most likely eating as great a 
variety of foods as any other well-to-do man. 
And among the lot it would not have been so 
easy to find the error as when he ate but two 
articles. 

Sugar in Modero's case had been an ever- 
present constituent of every meal he ate. It 
must have agreed with him for many years, as 
with nearly everybody else who uses it. But 
finally the stomach became tired of it, disgusted 
with it, and refused to handle it, or to handle 
any conglomeration of foods of which sugar as 
such formed a part. The behavior of the di- 
gestive apparatus, subject to its presiding nervous 
tissue, was such that we must suspect that nerv- 
ous tissue to have been affected in a manner 
similar to that of the brain which is concerned 
in the conscious sensation of disgust. 



ON THK CAUSES. 4 1 

Whatever else scientific folks might find in 
this topic, I am content with concluding that the 
stomach is clearly capable of becoming tired and 
disgusted with foods that are imposed upon it 
too often; that the stomach has the power of 
choice in which it agrees, but may disagree, with 
the head; that the stomach has the power to 
digest or to refuse to digest any particular mater- 
ial or the meal of which it is a part. 

33. The stomach so refusing to handle an item 
of food or the meal of which it is a part, the 
proper digestive processes failing to proceed, not 
even making a commencement, the ingested 
meal must rot, because all the conditions are 
present and favorable to such change, and the 
individual must suffer in the manner already ex- 
plained. It is mainly from the results of more 
or less rotting of food in the digestive canal that 
the dyspeptic suffers. The rotting occurs be- 
cause the digestive processes do not occur, or are 
tardy in their occurrence, or proceed so slowly 
as to allow time for rotting to occur also; as if 
the stomach were very reluctantly undertaking 
the same mess of stuff, or some detail of it, that 
it has had to work over many times more than 
enough to be tired and disgusted with it. The 
digestive processes must very promptly begin 
after food enters the stomach, and must be vigor- 
ously continued, otherwise the rotting process 



42 REPETITION DYSPEPSIA. 

will promptly and surely begin. Very good 
conditions for this purpose are always present in 
the stomach and bowels. Even when the digest- 
ive apparatus would properly digest a mess of 
food, if for any reason there is delay in its com- 
mencement, and the rotting process has a chance 
to begin, the case then becomes very much like 
a race between the two processes of change. 
The mess of food will be partly digested and 
partly rotted. 

Such is the case with many a dyspeptic. He 
endures a variable amount of more or less con- 
stant suffering, but still maintains the appearance 
of a well-nourished subject. He evidently di- 
gests and absorbs enough of his food to maintain 
his weight. The first result of indigestion is not 
a loss of weight, but rather a decline of working 
power, particularly of the mental kind. 

34. My efforts so far have been to show that 
almost any single article of food under certain 
circumstances will serve as a cause of indigestion 
and any or all of its consequences. The indi- 
gestion continues as long as the erroneous use 
of the food continues ; and I will add that the 
indigestion may go on to a fatal termination. I 
have no doubt it often does terminate fatally in 
cases of old people; in cases of persons sick 
from other diseases from which they are expected 
to recover, but who are so fed as to have indi- 



On the causes. 43 

gestion added as the last straw. And some cases 
end in suicide, assigning as the cause that they 
have no hope of recovery. I have also shown 
and illustrated by the case of Modero, and could 
have cited additional cases for the same purpose, 
how easy, simple, rational, and practicable, are 
the procedures by which a case of this class, 
however far gone, may be speedily restored to 
health. 

35. I wish now to consider more at length the 
materials and the circumstances under which 
they serve as causes of indigestion. Any item of 
food whatever is liable to serve as a cause of 
indigestion, when it has been used as a consider- 
able constituent of each of the three meals a day 
for several years.* Those materials, then, that 



*To this statement there are several important excep- 
tions relating to starchy foods. For examples: The poi 
of the Hawaiians, and the rice of the oriental nations. 

Among the Chinese, high or humble, no meal is ever 
served without rice. They eat rice three times a day the 
year round, and it causes them no dyspepsia. They eat 
it plain boiled and hot, adding only salt. 

The poor, having less else to eat with it, regard rice as 
of more importance, and eat more of it than the more 
fortunate classes do. Rice, however, is by no means the 
Chinaman's exclusive staff of life. Of other substantial 
foods and relishes he has and uses a list which is not only 
amply diversified for him, but would be enough so for 
any one else. 

It is quite certain that plain boiled rice, served fresh 



44 REPETITION DYSPEPSIA. 

most commonly and frequently form part of the 
meal are to be most suspected when a cause of 
indigestion is sought for. They are the sugar, 
milk and butter which are added to foods and 
drinks after they reach the table. But there is 
less reason for suspecting or objecting to the 
sugar, milk and butter which are employed in 
cooking, and are actually cooked. It so hap- 
pens that these materials are not so regularly and 
so frequently used in cooking as to become ob- 
jectionable on the ground of monotonous repeti- 
tion. Another important advantage which these 
substances have just after being cooked is, that 
they are sterilized. The spores that have lodged 
in the sugar bowl are destroyed. The microbian 



and hot, can safely be used in very liberal quantities twice 
every day by anybody. Any one who will give rice a 
fair trial of two weeks, will find it becomes palatable 
(without sugar or milk, etc.), and that there appears such 
a growing fondness for it as to make rice seem indispen- 
sable. 

If it be true that the Chinaman can use rice with a 
greater degree of frequency than we can, it would seem 
to be due to adaptation to such frequency, acquired by 
long persistence in it. 

I believe that rice is in all respects the best of the 
starch foods. I am sure that rice is the king of cereal 
grains, and the time will surely come, whether in the near 
or far future, when rice will be cultivated, used, and held 
in the same high estimation by the nations of the Occi- 
dent as it is now by those of the Orient. 



ON THE CAUSES. 45 

life that is associated with the remnant of the de- 
composing curd that remains in, and forms at 
least one per cent of, the best butter is destroyed. 
The milk, which in cities can never be fresh, f 
also has its infecting organisms killed by cook- 
ing. Being freshly cooked, then, sugar, milk 
and butter can not serve as infecting agents to 
set up decomposing processes in the stomach at 
times when the conditions for prompt and vigor- 
ous digestion are unfavorable. 

Bread is sometimes a cause of indigestion in 
one who eats bread three times a day in consid- 
erable quantities, and has done so for six months 
or more. Mutton-chops often serve as a cause 
when the subject has eaten them almost daily for 
months. Milk, at the rate of a quart a day, 
would, in a few months, make a dyspeptic of 
many a man. It is maintained, anywhere among 
the country people, that a man can not eat a 
quail a day for thirty consecutive days, cooked 
as he pleases. I have been reliably informed of 
two such attempts on quail, which, in accordance 
with the well -settled belief, did not succeed. 

I knew a chronic dyspeptic, not a patient of 
mine, who was fond of corned beef and cabbage, 
but dared not eat it. One evening the tempta- 



tUnless it be distributed after the fashion of the Chinese 
dairyman, who drives his cow or goat to the door of his 
customer. 



46 REPETITION DYSPEPSIA. 

tion was too much for him. Seeing another have 
it, he called for it, ate it, and expected to suffer, 
but was surprised and delighted to find that the 
corned beef and cabbage agreed with him per- 
fectly. He was very much pleased with this ex- 
perience. Next evening he called for corped 
beef and cabbage again, and enjoyed the eating 
of it very much, but suffered severely for some 
hours afterwards. He has never been able to 
reconcile his two evenings' experience with corned 
beef and cabbage. The stomach, whatever the 
conscious mental power above it may choose, 
may not tolerate corned beef and cabbage so often 
as twice in two days. When repeated within 
two days, the stomach, like a thing of good com- 
mon sense, may simply let it alone. Then, of 
course, it rots. But if in about two weeks the 
lover of corned beef and cabbage eat it again, it 
will be properly digested; it will agree with him 
— rather, the stomach will agree with him on the 
selection. 

A California pioneer, also not a patient of 
mine, a part of whose last illness was dyspepsia, 
related to me that baked beans agreed with him 
perfectly on Sunday mornings, but not so well 
on Monday mornings, and he suffered for eating 
again of the same invoice warmed over for break- 
fast on Tuesday mornings. He did not under- 
stand why his digestive apparatus would not 



ON THK CAUSES. 47 

manage "Boston baked beans" one day as well 
as another. 

36. In regard to corned beef and cabbage we 
observe here a periodicity, a space of time short 
of which it will not be tolerated by the stomach. 
Each item of food has its peculiar period, a 
space of time that should elapse before it is 
repeated. This period varies very much with 
different foods, and in regard to the same food 
the period varies with different persons. With 
the same person it varies very much at different 
times of life and in different occupations. 

Even a very small quantity of butter with 
each of the three meals a day is too often to use 
butter, and many a chronic dyspeptic could be 
sound and well in forty-eight hours if he would 
stop butter altogether, and would remain well if 
he would stop butter for three months and then 
resume, if he pleased, using butter only once, or 
at most, only twice a day. Sugar three times a 
day in tea or coffee is sugar too often, and was 
the fault for which Modero suffered. Whether 
sugar once a day, or twice a day, is the proper 
degree of frequency, is each individual's own 
personal matter. Some would not endure it 
twice a day. Some would endure it four times 
a day. As with butter and sugar, so with milk. 
One only needs to know there is a periodicity in 
relation to each article of food, and that there is 



48 REPETITION DYSPEPSIA. 

a penalty more or less severe for every violation 
of the law (of change) which it involves. Many 
an acute and painful paroxysm of indigestion 
has had its origin in the practice of warming- 
over foods which would not endure immediate 
repetition. Bread three times a day is too often; 
all the worse if much is eaten at each time. A 
person should not eat one kind of bread always, 
but should use several kinds, rather all ordinary 
kinds, making frequent changes. As an ex- 
clusive staff of life, no possible form of bread 
would long endure. A vigorous young man 
eighteen to twenty years of age may endure an 
exclusive bread diet for some months, but he 
would surely starve to death before the year was 
out. While he might well fatten on such diet 
during the first few weeks, and hold his own for 
some weeks longer, he would surely become 
dyspeptic, worse and worse, until the bread 
simply rotted within. Even then the decompo- 
sition products might contain some nutritive 
materials which would keep him alive, and also 
some poisons that would keep him sick. 

37. This law of periodicity in regard to individ- 
ual food articles need require no conscious 
thought on the part of those who have good and 
vigorous digestion. Such persons observe the 
law intuitively, not necessarily caring nor know- 
ing of its existence. The law of change must, 



ON THE CAUSES. 49 

however, receive some conscious attention and 
thought from those who are dyspeptic, other- 
wise they have little hope of immunity from 
suffering. The out-of-door muscle worker has 
several conditions favorable to vigorous digestion 
on his part, and will enjoy good digestion in 
spite of slight faults in the manner of his subsist- 
ence. 

It therefore happens that a dyspeptic is likely 
to recover and enjoy good health on changing to 
an out-of-door occupation. But what an ex- 
pensive way this is to correct a little error! The 
in-door brain worker is the one who is most 
likely and most certainly and severely to suffer 
the penalty for violation of the law of periodicity 
in regard to foods. He is also very likely to be 
subject to indigestion from the cause discussed 
in the next essay. The law of periodicity must 
be observed, and most persons observe it so 
automatically and intuitively that they need give 
it but little or no thought. Others seem never 
to think of it until after one or two weeks' indi- 
gestion, then after suspecting everything else as 
a cause and invoking the aid of a physician they 
may at last find the error, change and recover 
in twenty-four hours. The question of periodic- 
ity refers, of course, almost wholly to those foods 
that are available most of the time. It has little 
to do with foods that appear only during certain 
4 



50 REPETITION DYSPEPSIA. 

seasons, and are not preserved for use throughout 
the year so as to be available for excessive and 
monotonous repetition. One may eat daily, or 
several times daily, of a fruit, for example, during 
the season of its production, whereas he could 
not use the same kind of fruit more than two or 
three times a week when it is preserved for use 
throughout the year. There is nothing wrong 
about good fresh mince pie, if one is not already 
loaded when he eats it, and if the times be re- 
garded. One may eat mince pie several times a 
week for a few weeks in the winter, but once a 
week might be too often for the year round. 

38. We are now well advanced in the "age of 
cans," of which fact we were some years ago 
cleverly reminded by Dr. R. E. C. Stearns 
in the Overland Monthly. That remarkable 
age is upon us, but some are so far behind the 
time as not yet to have adapted themselves to it. 
With the age of cans has come a very great in- 
crease in the prevalence of the ills of indigestion, 
through no faults of the can, however. Before 
the advent of the can, it was not necessary to 
give so much thought to the matter of periodic- 
ity. The product of a season was used during 
that season. Now by various means the prod- 
uct of a season is preserved for use during all 
the rest of the year, and is available for those 
who erroneously believe that an item of food 



ON THE CAUSKS. 5 1 

which is good during six weeks of the year is 
also good for monotonons repetition all the year 
round. If we ate during each season what 
nature enables us to produce, there would be 
very much less opportunity for that monotonous 
subsistence which is the cause of much suffering 
from indigestion. The advent of the age of 
cans was not an evil in any respect, but with it 
there have come changes in the art of subsist- 
ence, and an imperative need of more intelligence 
and thought in connection with that art It is 
in the matter of that intelligence and thought 
that we are behind the time. 

39. Physiologists have done much painstaking 
work on the subject of digestion, but absolutely 
nothing of practical use has been done by any- 
body on the subject of indigestion. If indiges- 
tion is to be avoided, its causes must be known, 
as well as the circumstances and conditions 
under which they operate. Butter is naturally 
a product of the spring and early summer sea- 
sons, four and one-half months, let us say. Used 
only during that season, it is not likely that any 
one would suffer for eating it two or three times 
a day. But by artificial means fresh butter is 
made available and is eaten by many persons 
two, three or more times a day the year round, 
and many years in succession, and many dys- 
peptics owe their ills to this improvement in 



52 REPETITION DYSPEPSIA. 

dairy farming, or rather to their lack of adapta- 
tion to it. 

To use sugar as it occurs in nature, as a 
constituent of all the sweet fruits that we ought 
to consume in vastly greater quantities than we 
do, requires no thought at all. But the safe and 
healthful use of sugar from the bowl requires 
intelligent care to the extent that the sugar bowl, 
with its content, is an artificial contrivance, and 
not a necessary one either. "There are more 
cases of dyspepsia, in proportion to the popula- 
tion, in San Francisco than in any other city in 
the world. Ten men out of every twelve 
suffer from indigestion. And we do not know 
the reason why," said the venerable Dr. R. Beverly 
Cole in a lecture in 1883. In his attempt to 
emphasize the unexplained fact of its prevalence, 
Dr. Cole may have overstated the local extent of 
the trouble. That indigestion is more generally 
prevalent in San Francisco than in any other 
city in the world, seems to be true. That this 
has not yet been accounted for is a part of my 
apology for writing this book. 

40. In California, by virtue of its climate, the 
food-producing industries may be and are so 
conducted that we have here without cans 
almost the very conditions that the can age has 
brought about. Many of the common articles of 
every-day subsistence which are available in 



ON THE CAUSES. 53 

other temperate climates only during a few 
weeks or months, are here produced and avail- 
able, even to the poor, the greater part, if not all, 
the year round. The native Californian does 
not know the meaning of seasons as periods in 
which various classes of foods come in well- 
provided order and necessary changes. Here 
we are deprived of the assisting circumstance of 
change, and are put to the trouble of arranging 
changes for ourselves, which in other lands 
would be arranged for us by the seasons. The 
boarding-house landlady who is a one idead 
dietist may be quite satisfactory to the new 
boarder; but after a few weeks' patronage it is 
necessary, if the truth be known, to change to 
another boarding-house, not necessarily any 
better, but sufficiently different to constitute a 
real change. If one is a boarder here and finds 
himself troubled with a slight, variable, indefina- 
ble illness, referable to the stomach or bowel, he 
need not take a vacation, a camping trip, a 
tramp, a sea voyage, nor a doctor's advice. Any 
of these contrivances will restore him to tem- 
porary health, of course, because they all inci- 
dentally involve a change; even the worse than 
useless medicine added to his bill of fare, makes 
a change in his diet. Change is what he wants. 
Only change of diet, however, and sometimes 
the easiest way to secure it is to change boarding 



54 REPETITION DYSPEPSIA. 

houses. It is also sometimes well to change 
cooks. The regular way to live is to live irreg- 
ularly. There is a good deal of doubt about the 
success of the regular living that we hear of so 
often. 

41. Along with the large share of men in 
cities who are dyspeptics, there is, of course, also 
a large share of women who suffer from indiges- 
tion. In a female dyspeptic, when there is noth- 
ing else in sight to which the illness can be 
attributed with some show of apparent reason, 
the doctor, according to a custom now long pre- 
vailing, searches for an imaginary fault of an 
invisible ovary, or uterus, or something else, 
having an intimate functional relation to the 
digestive apparatus by virtue of a contrivance 
called sympathy. The lady is gravely informed, 
after one or more examinations by one or more 
doctors, that they have found a fault; that in 
their opinion it can be corrected, and it is also 
their opinion that, if corrected, the indigestion 
and nervousness and hysteria will cease. This 
is no fancy sketch. That the regular medical 
profession makes such errors, I know from good 
evidence. And I guess they make them fre- 
quently. I knew a poor woman, intelligent and 
industrious, whose dominant hope was to save up 
$250 to pay a good and prominent surgeon for 
an alleged necessary operation that would relieve 



ON THK CAUSES. 55 

her of the indigestion from which she had been 
suffering, more or less, for five to six years. I 
cured this lady completely within three days, by 
eliminating from her diet one item of food that 
she had been using three and more times a day 
for years. 

I have repeatedly seen nervousness and hys- 
teria and neurasthenia disappear as promptly 
as the causes of indigestion were eliminated. 
And I have repeatedly seen all rational signs of 
alleged functional disease of the heart disappear 
as promptly as the indigestion of the case was 
cured by correcting the errors which served as 
the causes. 

42. It has fallen to the lot of Dr. S. Weir 
Mitchell, of Philadelphia, to treat a large number 
of cases of a class of patients that is not well de- 
fined, but is distinguished as consisting chiefly of 
women suffering from neurasthenia and hysteria; 
the class including fat and lean anaemic women, 
nervous people, and sufferers from all sorts of 
chronic dyspepsia. That Dr. Mitchell has to 
some extent been successful in curing his cases, 
is to be inferred from his book on "Fat and 
Blood." How successful, I have no means of 
knowing. When a case of this kind is cured, the 
patient has after all gained but little if he has 
not been taught how to keep well. And the suc- 
cess of Dr. Mitchell or any other doctor is not 



56 REPETITION DYSPEPSIA. 

to be measured alone by the amount of his an- 
nual cash gains, but certainly also by the length 
of time that his cures endure. To put a very 
liberal interpretation on his writing, one could 
believe that Dr. Mitchell's work as a healer was 
very enduring. He refers to his work as a mat- 
ter to be judged in the light of its endurance, and 
speaking of his earlier cases, he says: "A vast 
proportion have remained in useful health." 

For purposes of scientific study one must be 
at least a little skeptical, and I think m a proper 
degree of skepticism must forbid one from put- 
ting much faith in the apparently careless state- 
ment that "a vast proportion have remained in 
useful health." Of the class of patients that 
Mitchell writes, it may be said that the majority, 
even the vast majority, had useful health before 
they came to him at all. Charles Darwin for a 
period of nearly forty years did not enjoy the 
health of the ordinary man even for a few days 
at a time. He was a chronic dyspeptic of the 
most confirmed sort, and a man of much suffer- 
ing; but from the amount and quality of his work 
it must be conceded that he was in useful health. 
The same was true of Thomas Carlyle during a 
period of fifty-five years, and is true of almost 
every chronic dyspeptic. 

43. The ills referred to by Mitchell are asso- 
ciated almost wholly with busy lives, and many 



ON THE CAUSES. 57 

of them subside on their own account when the 
person stops work. The ills to which Mitchell 
mostly refers are closely related to each other, 
in fact do not differ greatly from each other, and 
dyspepsia is the mother of them all. Malnutri- 
tion, anaemia, nervous debility, neurasthenia and 
hysteria, referred to as if they were independent 
conditions or diseases and treated as such, are 
wholly dependent for their existence on indiges- 
tion, and maybe wholly neglected and trusted to 
disappear altogether, as they surely will, when the 
indigestion is properly remedied. That Mitchell 
often cured his cases need not be doubted, how- 
ever erroneous it may have been to mistake a 
series of evils for the root of them. The proce- 
dures of the "rest cure," as Mitchell's method is 
called, are so elaborate and so extensive and in- 
volve such a length of time as to cover the con- 
ditions necessary for remedying the causes of 
indigestion and effecting a temporary cure. 

The "rest cure" is a shotgun scheme, an elab- 
orate program of procedures some detail of 
which will hit the mark and produce the result. 
But when we have found that dyspepsia is the 
root of all the evils for which the "rest cure" is 
prescribed, and see how easily this dyspepsia can 
be enduringly cured, then we must conclude that 
the cure of these cases by Dr. Mitchell's method 
is as roundabout and as costly and as absurd 



58 REPETITION DYSPEPSIA. 

as the original method of obtaining roast pig by 
burning the house down, as related in one of 
Charles Lamb's good stories. 

44. All the forces that a man evolves are de- 
rived from the foods upon which he subsists. 
If one eats little he can evolve but little force, 
can do but little work. Whatever the amount of 
food that the suffering dyspeptic consumes, the 
force which he can evolve will be diminished to 
the extent that the food rots, and he will also be 
incapacitated for work by the illness incidental 
to such rotting of foods in the stomach and in- 
testine. The condition of such a person is a 
great deal worse, and his working capacity is far 
less, than that of one who is simply ill fed, or 
under fed; for the latter case is without the in- 
capacitating illness. It needs but little explana- 
tion to enable even a superficial observer to see 
that the career of a dyspeptic in proceeding from 
bad to worse must lead inevitably to ancemia, 
malnutrition , nervous debility, neurasthenia, hys- 
teria, etc. Anaemia means poverty of blood, in 
respect of its own constituents, and in respect of 
nutritive material, and is a direct and obvious re- 
sult of indigestion, and is one of the regular be- 
longings of the chronic dyspeptic. 

45. An ansemic person is one whose blood is 
lean, and he must necessarily suffer from mal- 
nutrition, which means that he is lean and his 



ON THE CAUSES. 59 

tissues are not being kept in repair to the stand 
ard of size, weight, and quality which are proper 
to him. Malnutrition is the plain and obvious 
result of anaemia, and therefore of indigestion, 
and is one of the regular belongings of the 
chronic dyspeptic. The leanness of the dyspep- 
tic, however, is not always apparent. Malnutri- 
tion may not observably reduce one's size, but 
must certainly result in deterioration of quality 
and of working efficiency. It is then said that 
the patient suffers from nervous debility, which 
means a deficiency of energy in general, with the 
deficiency of mental energy most apparent, and 
manifesting itself in a diminished power of apply- 
ing one's self to his work. 

46. A man's food is the source of his energies, 
and, of course, when, as in the case of the dys- 
peptic, the food rots, and is thus diverted from 
its proper course of changes, it must fail to yield 
energy, and the diminution of capacity for work 
must be the result. The same is to be said of 
neurasthenia (nervous exhaustion or nervous 
prostration). When the amount of nutritive 
material delivered by the digestive apparatus to 
the circulating blood is considerably reduced, 
there must be a corresponding reduction of the 
amount of energy which the person can evolve. 
And so far as the mental powers are concerned, 
the general reduction of available energy may 



60 REPETITION DYSPEPSIA. 

first show itself in the decline of the person's 
power of self-control. The determining power 
and inhibiting power may be to a greater or less 
extent reduced, or even suspended, and the per- 
son for the time being becomes to the same 
extent automatic. A person in this condition 
will under ordinary circumstances seem to be 
of sound mind, because his accustomed conduct 
of body and mind continues to be maintained by 
virtue of habit. 

Outside of accustomed lines of conduct, how- 
ever, he or she will have little or no power of 
self-determination upon any course of action. 
When prompted to action (laughing or crying, 
for example) by some objective stimulus, she 
will be powerless to restrain herself. We can 
easily be misled to conclude that a person in the 
condition referred to displays an excessive amount 
of mental energy; but, really, she is without her 
best powers. Being unable to direct herself, she 
is governed by any and every circumstance that 
can affect her as an objective stimulus. And, 
unable to restrain herself, her action is limited 
only by the exhaustion of her remaining and in- 
ferior powers. A woman in the state of body 
and mind I speak of is said to be hysterical. 
When a man is in this condition he may become 
aware of it by being powerless to restrain him- 
self from the automatic thinking which goes on 



ON THE CAUSES. 6 1 

contrary to his will and keeps him awake during 
sleeping hours. 

47. Nervous debility, nervous exhaustion, 
nervous prostration and hysteria, all are, and to 
my mind mean, about the same condition, for 
which, it seems to me, nervous prostration would 
be the fittest name; and it is the name which for 
my purpose I will use. 

Nervous prostration, as a result of overtime 
work, will concern us in my second essay. It 
concerns us here only as one of the ills of indi- 
gestion, as a result of the food failing, by virtue 
of its indigestion, to reach the circulating blood, 
and thus failing to yield that full measure of 
mental power that the man of good digestion 
enjoys. 

48. So far as indigestion itself is concerned, 
dyspeptics can not be classified. When diges- 
tion fails, rotting succeeds. The rotting processes 
can differ only as the rotting materials differ. 
The conglomerate mess of food that enters the 
digestive canal in general is a matter of infinite 
and ever-changing variety, and the phenomena 
of indigestion will, of course, vary to the same 
great extent. The indigestion being dependent 
on one or more errors in the manner or condi- 
tions of subsistence, the illness will present the 
same phenomena so long as the errors or causes 
of indigestion are the same. 



62 REPETITION DYSPEPSIA. 

The phenomena resulting from indigestion 
often differ very much, but there are no distinct 
lines upon which a rational classification can be 
made. 

When, however, the causes of indigestion are 
considered, and the manner of their operation, 
then we find them to consist of three very dis- 
tinct classes. And extending, for the sake of 
convenience, to indigestion, the distinctions of its 
causes, we may regard indigestion as of three 
kinds. We will learn that one and the same 
dyspeptic may suffer from all three kinds of in- 
digestion, or rather causes, at the same or differ- 
ent times. The differences of resulting phenom- 
ena are due wholly to the differences of the 
materials that are rotting; differences of quantity, 
of quality, and of the extent to which rotting 
takes place. Whichever of the three causes it 
may be due to, the indigestion and its resulting 
phenomena will be the same when the ingested 
materials are the same in quantity and quality 
and the rotting has proceeded to the same 
extent. 

49. The causes of indigestion are separable 
into three classes, which fact permits me to say- 
that there are three classes of dyspepsias. One 
of the three classes has already received enough 
of our attention, and it has become plain that in 
every case of this class the cause of indigestion 



ON THK CAUSES. 6$ 

lies in the too frequent and monotonous repeti- 
tion of some one or more articles of food. And 
what I have said rests entirely upon a broad 
basis of observation and personal experience. 
Being in need of a name by which to distinguish 
those who suffer from the class ol causes already 
discussed, I will designate them as the repetition 
dyspeptics. 

ON THE MANNER OF CONDUCTING CASES. 

50. In the matter of treating cases of repeti- 
tion dyspepsia for the purpose of curing them, I 
have found it sufficient in some cases to point 
out to the patient the errors upon which his ill- 
ness depended. It has been enough for some 
such cases to point out to them their special 
errors in particular, and to give them personally 
a synopsis of this essay in general. 

It has been my custom to instruct each pa- 
tient as fully as possible. I have succeeded best 
by doing so. Generally a dyspeptic will not 
reform, or will not remain reformed, unless he 
understands as far as possible the reasons for the 
changes urged upon him. It will not generally 
be enough to be content with merely telling a 
patient, but he needs to be well taught in relation 
to the particular errors he has been committing, 
and he must also be instructed on the principles 
he has been violating. 



64 REPETITION DYSPEPSIA. 

Careful instruction, in a manner that may be 
called teaching as distinguished from mere tell- 
ing, will be quite sufficient for the speedy, com- 
plete, and enduring recovery of some repetition 
dyspeptics. Of that share of cases which can be 
so easily disposed of, it only remains to say that 
they have the mental power to understand and 
the courage to make the reforms upon which 
their recovery must depend. They have gener- 
ally not suffered many years, their errors have 
not yet acquired the character of dominating 
habits. They have not yet been invalided bodily 
and mentally, and have therefore yet some avail- 
able force for executing unaided their own share 
of the necessary reform. So much may also be 
said of some of the cases that owe their ills to 
the causes discussed in my second and third 
essays. 

51. When a case presents itself, and it has by 
a process of questioning been determined that 
the illness consists of, or proceeds from, dyspep- 
sia, the next step will be to determine by what 
procedures the cure shall be undertaken. If the 
errors are few, and have not been too many 
years habitually committed, and if the age, con- 
dition of health, and the power of understanding 
on the part of the patient are favorable, and he 
has the will and courage to execute the pre- 
scribed reforms, then it will be sufficient to point . 



ON THE MANNER OF CONDUCTING CASES. 65 

out his errors and impart an understanding of 
the same and of the principles which they vio- 
late. It is rather exceptional that a dyspeptic 
needs to be instructed in relation to any one 
class of errors or causes alone, for it more gen- 
erally happens that along with the errors of 
monotonous diet are found also errors of the 
kinds discussed in my second and third essays. 
It is my custom, therefore, to instruct each 
dyspeptic patient on all the causes of indigestion, 
and it is my aim to insure him once for all 
against the ills of indigestion for life. 

For this reason, then, my instructions to a 
dyspeptic are no less than a synopsis of the three 
essays of this book, supplemented by all the 
personal and special instruction and direction 
that the case requires. When it has been settled 
that I shall conduct the treatment of a case, an 
engagement is made for a forenoon, afternoon or 
evening. Two hours may then be spent in con- 
veying to the patient and learner a synopsis of 
all that concerns the dyspeptic in general. It is 
my custom then to see the patient about three 
times in the six days following this first working 
engagement. On these subsequent engagements, 
each of which may consume as much time as the 
needs of the case require, the instruction and 
discussion are continued, and are determined and 
governed by the questions and experiences which 
S 



66 REPETITION DYSPEPSIA. 

have occurred to the patient since the preceding 
meeting. Such meetings are continued as long 
as there remains any necessity for them. They 
become less and less frequent, once every two 
days until four, five or six meetings have been 
had. Then it may be sufficient to meet several 
times at the rate of once a week, and, perhaps, a 
few more times when called. 

The greatest progress toward recovery that a 
patient makes is almost invariably during the 
first two weeks. In this time, and even in one 
week, complete and enduring recovery very 
often takes place. It is for the completion of 
the instruction that meetings are continued, 
sometimes far beyond the absolute recovery of 
the patient, for the purpose of arming him with 
the knowledge that will insure him against pos- 
sible recurrences of his illness otherwise. On 
the part of the patient it will in the end often 
prove unsatisfactory to cease his pursuit of learn- 
ing as soon as he has recovered from his illness. 
For while his instruction remains incomplete, he 
is not certainly free from liability to the recur- 
rence of his illness. The mere fact of a person 
being a sufferer from indigestion indicates on his 
part a predisposition thereto. He can not escape 
the liability, and nothing short of a practical (if 
not theoretical) mastery of the known facts on 
the subject can be relied on for subsequent im- 
munity. 



ON THE MANNER OF CONDUCTING CASES. 67 

52. Some sufferers from indigestion are too 
ill, at the inception of treatment, to undertake 
any share of their own management. Sometimes 
their errors have become dominant habits al- 
ready long confirmed. Sometimes their errone- 
ous subsistence is influenced by circumstances 
over which they have no control. Even the 
influences of the kindest of relatives may be 
obstructive of a patient's reform. The correction 
of the diet of an individual sufferer remaining at 
home may involve too much trouble with the 
cook in particular and with the family in general. 
One is not willing to instruct a whole family, 
relatives thrown in, for the purpose of curing a 
single member. 

In some cases, owing to that mental decline 
which is often incidental to old age, there is 
wanting the ability and the courage to make the 
necessary dietetic changes. It is plainly appar- 
ent then that mere personal directions and in- 
structions, however carefully delivered, will be 
almost utterly useless. Experience shows that 
by such means in such cases the result is of no 
use to the patient and no credit to the physician. 

The only thing to be done, so far as I know, 
in such cases is to place a well-trained assistant 
to serve in personal attendance upon the patient 
for at least two weeks. The patient may be kept 
at home if the conditions there are favorable, 



68 REPETITION DYSPEPSIA. 

otherwise he is placed where all the conditions 
for restraint and recovery are as favorable as the 
personal direction and control of the physician 
can make them. A patient so taken from his 
home, or accustomed abode, is settled for at least 
two weeks in a place specially provided and made 
suitable and congenial for just such cases. The 
attendant assigned to a case is selected with ref- 
erence to fitness for the purpose, and will see to 
it that the special instructions for the patient are 
strictly observed. 

Though not essential to recovery, massage is 
a very important aid. It improves the quality of 
sleep, it soothes irritable minds, it facilitates 
drainage of the body; it has been likened to the 
stirring of the ashes out of the grate, the fire 
then burns so much the better ; more fuel, that 
is, food, is then consumed and more vigorously 
digested and more readily appropriated. Mas- 
sage greatly improves sleep, appetite, digestion, 
nutrition, and very much hastens the restoration 
of a recovering patient to his normal weight. 
Massage serves all the purposes of vigorous 
exercise, but is in all respects superior to it for 
the patient's purposes. It costs none of his 
energy, and therefore allows his forces the more 
to be employed for purposes of restoration and 
repair, or to be stored in the form of fat. 

An occasional patient (generally female) will 



ON THK MANNER OF CONDUCTING CASES. 69 

object when massage is mentioned. This will 
be because it has once or oftener been tried in 
her case and has served none of the useful pur- 
poses for which it has been applied. It has been 
overdone. It has not been grateful, soothing, 
and restful. It has lacked adaptation to the case. 

Strip massage of every other detail; let it con- 
sist only of pressure upon all the softer parts of 
the body (abdomen not necessarily included). 
The operator should begin at fingers and toes, 
and work with both hands gradually in the direc- 
tion of the venous circulation. It is in no sense 
necessary to touch the skin or expose it to cold. 
Nightclothes or sheet may intervene, and the 
operator can work with hands under the blankets. 
The movements of the operator's hands should 
be rythmical, and the pressure should be applied 
to a slightly different location at every movement, 
with a degree of force measured by what is en- 
durable or agreeable to the patient. 

The best times for massage are before rising 
in the morning and after retiring at night. An 
application of massage may last thirty to sixty 
minutes, and is to be measured only by the length 
of time it is agreeable and soothing to the patient. 
The patient must be allowed to enjoy it in peace 
and quiet, and, if properly done, the patient will 
sleep more or less during its application. The 
operator should therefore keep a still tongue 



70 REPETITION DYSPEPSIA. 

while thus employed. At the conclusion of his 
work at night he will see the patient properly 
covered, arrange for the night's ventilation, dis- 
pose of the light, and quietly say only "good 
night" as a signal that he is done and is leaving 
the room. Done in this simple, rythmical, gentle 
and quiet way, massage is much liked and easily 
endured by those who have suffered from the 
too "professional" variety of this very useful 
detail of treatment. 

A patient so placed is none the less fully in- 
structed. The process of instruction is resorted 
to after he has so far recovered as to be able to 
understand. It is my custom to have it under- 
stood, when I take a dyspeptic case for treatment, 
that a complete cure will be achieved, and that 
the patient will be fully empowered, by virtue of 
the knowledge he is to acquire, to easily avoid 
ever again falling into any chronic dyspeptic 
condition. It is hardly practicable, nor is it 
necessary, to specify all the details of change, 
restraint and instruction that must be attended 
to in the conduct of a case. Though individual 
cases differ very much sometimes, the principles 
involved are the same in all cases. They furnish 
the guidance for the management of patients; 
they are fully discussed and explained in the 
three essays of this book. Each individual case 
is a study by itself. Guided by the principles 



ON THK MANNER OF CONDUCTING CASKS. 7 1 

which account for dyspepsia in general, the phy- 
sician must study each case in particular, and 
conduct its treatment in accordance with the 
findings. The patient, being in one or two weeks 
put fairly on the road to recovery, is then leis- 
urely and easily instructed on the subject, that 
he may know better than again to commit the 
errors that cause indigestion. 

53. Constipation is an important detail of al- 
most every case of repetition dyspepsia and of 
energy-diversion dyspepsia. So far as it is de- 
pendent on indigestion it will take care of itself 
when the errors causing the indigestion are cor- 
rected. So far as it is caused by an insufficient 
amount of fluid injested, it will be remedied by 
taking hot water into the empty stomach, that is, 
before breakfast a pint or more, and at bedtime 
a pint or more. And if the desired effect is then 
not yet achieved, the amounts of hot water taken 
at the times stated may be increased, and addi- 
tional amounts of hot water may also be taken 
at other times of day, preferably between meals. 
The aggregate daily amount of hot water taken 
should be increased until the desired laxative 
effect is produced. By taking cups of hot water 
at five-minute intervals it will be found surpris- 
ingly easy to take six cups or two and one-half 
pints in half an hour. The most delicate patient 
will find herself easily capable of taking, in this 



72 REPETITION DYSPEPSIA. 

way, two and one-half pints of hot water from 
thirty to sixty minutes before breakfast, and the 
same quantity again about the middle of the 
forenoon and middle of the afternoon. The lax- 
ative condition of the bowel should then be 
maintained by the same means — water as much 
as may seem necessary and as hot as it can be 
conveniently taken. Water, like all other laxa- 
tives, is most effective when taken into an empty 
stomach. Another cause of constipation is the 
quantitative insufficiency of fruit in the diet. I 
have no trouble in inducing a dyspeptic patient 
to consume six to eight times as much fruit as 
the average boarding house reckons per indi- 
vidual. 

Constipation, then, is cured by correcting 
the errors that cause indigestion, by consuming 
plenty of hot water, and by the use of an abun- 
dance of fruit. These three procedures are jointly 
resorted to; the hot water and the fruit are used 
in rapidly increasing amounts until the desired 
effect is attained. Thereafter such an amount of 
fruit is used two or three times daily, and such * 
amounts of hot water, as may be necessary to 
maintain the proper laxative condition of the 
bowel. 

On this plan of procedure the bowel will be 
acting very well in two or three days, and the 
patient will be thoroughly cleaned out in five or 



ON THK MANNER OE CONDUCTING CASES. 73 

six days. And he will not neglect to remark 
that he feels like a new man. 

Of course, an ounce or two of castor-oil would 
clean a person out more expeditiously and save 
a day or two of time, but it is worth a week or 
two of the patient's time to learn the valuable 
and simple lesson involved in the fact that the 
constipation of years is not so obstinate, after all, 
and that it can be so easily cured by procedures 
so simple and rational. 

Too much can not be said of the orange as a 
laxative fruit. It is the most efficient laxative 
fruit in the greatest number of cases. A person 
can eat oranges every day during the orange 
season. When a dyspeptic can not eat oranges, 
it is likely to be only during the early part of 
the orange season when they are not yet as ripe - 
and as sweet as they will be later on. 

A half dozen medium-sized oranges per day 
is little enough to rely on for getting the bowel 
into good condition. No case of constipation 
can be produced which will not easily yield to 
hot water and fruit after the causes of the dys- 
pepsia in the case have been removed. 

Now and then a person, well advanced in years, 
complains of being disturbed and awakened too 
early in the morning by an excess of gas in the 
bowel which may or may not be painful. He 
moves the gas and perhaps unloads the rectum, 



74 REPETITION DYSPEPSIA. 

but he is unable so far to recover from the dis- 
turbance as to get to sleep again. In a case of 
this kind the rectum should be unloaded just 
before going to bed at night. Should the patient 
lack the inclination or ability to do this naturally, 
a little glycerine, a teaspoonful, placed just inside 
the back door, no farther, will cause an unload- 
ing of material, solid and gaseous, that will sur- 
prise the patient if he has never tried it. There 
will then be much less gas in the bowel to 
disturb the patient towards morning, because less 
decomposing solid matter from which gases 
develop. 

When, under exceptional circumstances, the 
unloading of the rectum requires artificial aid, 
nothing will be found equal to a teaspoonful of 
glycerine put just inside of the back door. For 
infants and children the glycerine enema is 
found to be better in all respects than any other 
artificial aid in unloading the bowel. 

54. When a dyspeptic comes along he gener- 
ally enumerates a list of good substantial items 
of food and drink which he has long been deny- 
ing himself, but which he needs. As a result he 
is hungry, has lost flesh, has lost capacity for the 
endurance of work. He is suffering from starva- 
tion, otherwise called malnutrition, nervous de- 
bility, nervous prostration, and neurasthenia. 

One item of self-denial is specially noteworthy. 



ON THE MANNER OF CONDUCTING CASKS. 75 

When the amount of fluid consumed is dimin- 
ished below the minimum requirement of the 
body, there will occur precipitations, solidifica- 
tions, or concretions, of matters that should 
normally remain in solution while in the body. 

Some of these precipitated matters form little 
crystalline grains, well-known to chronic rheu- 
matic patients, who can feel them and dig them 
from under the skin about the joints. It is their 
presence as foreign bodies that causes the pains 
of rheumatism. When a sufferer from dyspepsia 
also has rheumatism, and it is found that the 
total of fluids consumed by him seems altogether 
too small for purposes of circulation and efficient 
drainage, then it is very likely that the rheuma- 
tism can be made to disappear entirely, and often 
very quickly, by administering all the hot water, 
preferably distilled, or at least boiled, that he can 
be induced to take in increasing amounts four to 
six times a day. The water will redissolve 
these unnaturally precipitated solids. And by 
administering massage morning and evening, 
very gently at first and more vigorously as the 
pain subsides, this solution will be facilitated, as 
will also the elimination from the body of the 
excess of these salts that have accumulated for 
want of fluid to hold them in solution and carry 
them off. 

Another distressing result of the same errone- 



j6 REPETITION DYSPEPSIA. 

ous self, or imposed, denial of fluids is such a 
concentrated condition of the urine that it be- 
comes acrid and irritating to the kidneys and 
bladder. A condition of things which makes the 
patient feel as if the bladder urgently needs to be 
emptied when there is yet very little in it. A 
patient in such a condition has his nights spoiled 
by being forced to get up half a dozen times, 
more or less, to empty his bladder by efforts that 
are tedious, laborous, and yet apparently unsuc- 
cessful from the fact that he must soon try again. 

The urine is too dense, too concentrated. It 
is so irritating as to cause the bladder to become 
diseased, all because the patient has not taken 
water enough. On the grounds of experience 
in practice, I venture to say that recent rheuma- 
tisms and that catarrhal condition of the bladder, 
which have been associated with an insufficient 
consumption of fluid, will completely subside 
with a degree of rapidity that will be quite satis- 
factory. 

All the water consumed becomes for a time 
part of the blood, and the hot water treatment 
as a means of washing every fibre of the body 
has an efficiency that is altogether underesti- 
mated. 

To what extent disease of the bladder may 
result from abnormally dense urine, when long 
enough continued, is a question that is simply 



OX THK MANNER OF CONDUCTING CASES. 77 

worth suggesting here. Stones in the bladder, 
in the kidneys, in the gall bladder, and the more 
promiscuous calcareous deposits in various tis- 
sues of the body, are not yet satisfactorily 
accounted for. 

Several other ills that result from, or are 
sometimes incidental to, indigestion may be en- 
tirely neglected when the causes are properly 
attended to; no further mention of them is 
therefore made here. 

55. A patient, in anticipation of treatment, 
expects a good deal of self-denial to be imposed 
upon him. When the one, or two, or three 
items of food in erroneous use by him, and not 
essential to his subsistence, are eliminated from 
his diet, he is allowed everything else under the 
sun. So that under treatment, as well as after 
recovery, the patient enjoys much greater free- 
dom in the selection of foods than before. 

In writing of the monotonous repetition of 
items of food as causes of indigestion, I have 
discriminated specially against the raiv state of 
butter, sugar, and milk when these have been 
repeated too long and too often. 

It should be understood that when the stom- 
ach has acquired a repugnance against an item 
of food in the raw state, it may be found neces- 
sary to eliminate such item from the list of 
cooked foods also. If the digestive apparatus 



yS REPETITION DYSPEPSIA. 

Qoes not like butter and will not have it. the 
patient is likely to suffer even for eating anything 
in the cooking of which butter in quantities ever 
so small has been used. Although butter may 
be baked in biscuit, etc., it is butter still, for it 
does not lose its identity. It is not so necessary 
to discriminate against milk in cookery, nor 
against sugar. But it is altogether too common 
to find these things used to excess in cooking. 

It is very important that the dyspeptic patient 
under treatment should, while at his meals, be 
at mental and bodily rest, making no effort 
whatever aside from eating and drinking. That 
"unquiet meals make ill digestions'' should 
always be borne in mind, and may often, with 
advantage, be quoted to silence a patient who 
is wasting for talk the energy he needs for diges- 
tion. Generally an hour's rest of mind and body 
is also necessary after each meal. This matter 
of resting during and after meals is important 
enough in all cases under treatment, but is abso- 
lutely indispensable in the treatment of the 
energy-diversion dyspepsia of the second essay. 

I have omitted the consideration of some 
details of restraint which the reader will already 
understand from the discussion of causes. It is 
possible to show that there are a great many 
persons who have at some time, even for long 
periods, suffered from indigestion, and that they 



ON THK MANNER OF CONDUCTING CASKS. 79 

have long ago entirely recovered by means not 
satisfactorily explained. Such spontaneous re- 
coveries show how easily recoveries may be 
attained when we know how. And when we 
find out how, it proves to be a vastly more sim- 
ple thing than anyone expected. 

56. That indigestion is, and must generally be, 
attended by other and dependent ills has been 
already shown. But it often happens that a 
dependent illness, a mere result or symptom, is 
regarded as the principal illness, and treatment 
erroneously directed to it accordingly. The 
dependent result in such cases appears so much 
more conspicuous than the parent illness that 
the patient mistakes the effect for cause, and the 
physician, with few exceptions, makes the same 
mistake. How very generally the physician 
directs his efforts and his drugs toward the 
resulting nervotts phenomena instead of the pri 
mary causes of indigestion has already been 
intimated, and is quite sufficient to account for 
the failure, in general, of existing modes of 
treatment in all cases in which indigestion is and 
has been present from the first. 

57. The frequent occurrence of some generally 
slight and unimportant structural defect of the 
heart has been briefly pointed out in my second 
essay. I have there also shown that functional 
disturbance of the heart and circulation may be, 



80 REPETITION DYSPKPSIA. 

and often is, dependent upon indigestion. And 
I wish here to offer a caution against concluding 
that a case is heart disease, and treating it accord- 
ingly, when, really, the more conspicuous func- 
tional disturbance of the heart and circulation 
depends upon the less obvious disorders of 
digestion. This mistake is very often made. 
The heart will appear to be very weak in partic- 
ular, when the patient is very weak in general as 
a result of long suffering from indigestion. The 
function of the heart may be disturbed by poi- 
sonous products of the decomposition going on 
in the digestive canal. The function of the heart 
may be disturbed by anxiety of the patient who 
is suspicious and easily alarmed. The heart may 
be disturbed by being crowded and pressed upon, 
when the digestive canal is much distended by 
gases that result from decomposition of the in- 
gested food. I pay no attention whatever to 
functional disturbances of the heart so long as 
there is any error of digestion to be corrected. 

58. Effects on the skin, sometimes seen, often 
only felt, result from indigestion sometimes. 
And sometimes such effects on the skin are due 
to certain foods used under certain circumstances, 
the digestion being apparently perfect. It hap- 
pens now and then that when a person is kept 
awake and spends a good part of the night 
scratching, it will be found to be due, in a way 



ON THK MANNER OF CONDUCTING CASKS. 8 1 

not understood, to some item of food ingested 
at the previous evening meal. What is true in 
any particular case in this respect is likely to be 
peculiar to that case, and is not likely to be true 
of other cases in general. While therefore it is 
true that strawberries and figs and tomatoes, 
etc., when consumed at the evening meal, will in- 
flict on some persons, not indigestion, but a night 
of cutaneous irritation and insomnia, it does not 
follow that other persons should avoid these food 
items at the evening meal, nor that any one 
should avoid them at other times of the day. 

It will be useless to direct treatment to any 
symptoms whatever so long as there are causes 
to be removed. When the causes of indigestion 
have been eliminated, there will generally remain 
little or nothing else to do in the case except to 
instruct for purposes of subsequent prevention. 

Indigestion is often associated with other ill- 
nesses in accidental ways. It is then generally 
practicable to cure the indigestion at once, and 
thus improve the patient's chances of recovery 
from the more serious disease, or to reduce his 
suffering very much even if the disease must pro- 
ceed to a fatal termination, as in cases of ab- 
normal growths inside. 

59. To the dyspeptic it will often seem that 
his suffering is proportional to the amount of 
food he takes. Accordingly a dyspeptic is likely 
6 



82 REPETITION DYSPEPSIA. 

to be taking less food than he needs. And for 
this reason he is likely to be suffering the pangs 
of hunger except when actual illness obscures 
the sensation of it. When a dyspeptic has just 
been suffering more than usual and is in need of 
food for recuperation, yet is afraid to eat lest he 
suffer for doing so, it is plain that there must in 
many cases be extraordinary temptation to resort 
to alcoholic liquors. The agony of hunger is to 
some extent subdued by these liquors and the 
physical powers of the sufferer are to some ex- 
tent sustained by them — to such an extent that 
the temptation is particularly strong at critical 
times. 

It is a fact that inebriety is in some cases de- 
pendent upon indigestion, and the treatment of 
that condition should consist of letting it alone, 
and treating the subject as a dyspeptic instead. 

It will be found in cases of this kind where in- 
ebrity has not yet become habitual and chronic, 
that the sprees are preceded by paroxysms of 
indigestion; that when for a period of time diges- 
tion is fairly good, there is no desire for nor use 
of alcoholic liquors. 

So far as inebriety does depend on indigestion, 
its cure, or prevention, certainly presents no dif- 
ficulty. I have no doubt that paroxysms of in- 
digestion account for sprees much oftener than 
we are aware of. 



ON THE MANNER OF CONDUCTING CASES. 83 

60. In the treatment of a case no account is 
taken of the possible diseased conditions of the 
stomach and bowel, because these diseased con- 
ditions are purely the results of indigestion, and 
are directly due to the local effects of the irrita- 
ting, corrosive and poisonous products of decom- 
position. The extent to which the digestive 
apparatus may be diseased is not at all propor- 
tional to the time that the patient may have 
been suffering. So that it really happens to be 
of common occurrence that a patient has been a 
somewhat keen sufferer from indigestion for years, 
and yet, upon the prompt correction of the er- 
rors that served as the causes, would in three, 
and even two days be so well that no remaining 
diseased condition of the stomach or bowel could 
be suspected to be present. 

Simple catarrh of the stomach and bowel may 
be expected to subside in a very few days. 
When the diseased condition consists of struc- 
tural modification of the mucous membrane (ab- 
normal secretions resulting), it may require six 
or even twelve weeks, but restoration to its nor- 
mal condition will take place nevertheless. Cir- 
cumstances in some cases indicate the presence 
of ulcers. They will heal. 

Complete restoration of the mucous membrane 
to its original normal constitution and function 
will take place. It may require three months, 



84 REPETITION DYSPEPSIA. 

and the patient is fortunate enough if the achiev- 
ment is made in six months. When, after eat- 
ing, there are no disagreeable sensations to re- 
mind the patient that he has a stomach, then 
disease of it is at an end. 

61. The time required to conduct a case will 
be prolonged by any relapses due to indiscretions 
or misunderstandings on the part of the patient, 
or to errors of direction on the part of the phy- 
sician. It generally makes a great deal of differ- 
ence whether I conduct a case at patient's home, 
or take him to my house for that purpose. 
Last year (1895) I attempted for six months to 
cure a man in San Francisco, and failed for want 
of cooperation on the part of his family. The 
wife consulted her family physician as to me and 
my method. The doctor reluctantly acknowl- 
edged that I was a physician, but said I was not 
an educated physician, and that my method was 
all a humbug. This same European family doctor 
had been tinkering with this same case for about 
two years to no purpose. Then my attempts on 
the case extended over six months. 

Finally I induced the patient to come and stop 
with me awhile. After one week he went home 
sound and well, more than pleased and more than 
satisfied, and has kept well during the twelve 
months since that time. This patient was fifty- 
nine years of age, had been a considerable suf- 



ON THE MANNER OF CONDUCTING CASES. 85 

ferer for twelve years, and looked when he came 
to me as though he might not endure more than 
a year or two longer. 

In September, 1894, I gave my closest per- 
sonal attention to a case for one week, then 
visited him daily for two weeks more, and was 
then done with him. Four weeks after my 
beginning with this man he resumed his work. 
He had not been at work for twelve months 
when I first met him, and had been in a specially 
bad condition for two years. He weighed one 
hundred and one and one-half pounds (his nor- 
mal being one hundred and twenty) inclusive of 
heavy clothing, was sixty-four years of age, 
had been forty-five years a dyspeptic, had at 
various times resorted to all the known resources 
in such cases and to distinguished doctors in 
New York, London, Paris and elsewhere. When 
I undertook this case it was not expected by any 
of his friends that he would live many months 
longer. For purposes of diagnosis and favorable 
prognosis this was the clearest case I ever saw, 
errors so glaringly apparent and so easy to 
correct 

I promised a complete cure the first hour I 
saw him, and that end was achieved contrary to 
the expectation of everybody but myself. Rheu- 
matism and disease of the bladder were disabling 
complications. 



86 REPETITION DYSPEPSIA. 

The closest personal attention to having my 
instructions put unvaringly and promptly into 
execution was the cause of the rapid progress in 
this case. The man has remained well during 
the two years that have since elapsed. 

62. It is only the chronic dyspeptic that comes 
in quest of a radical cure. When there is only 
now and then a paroxysm of acute suffering the 
patient comes for relief from the suffering of the 
time. That is all he expects and he will gener- 
ally not consent to more. The acute pain may 
last a day or a night if let alone. With pare- 
goric the patient is made less sensible to his 
suffering, with no other good and some other 
evil. The better way to deal with the case is to 
fill the patient with palatably hot water, and then 
continue giving him a cup of hot water every 
five minutes until acute suffering ceases ; either 
because in from ten to twenty minutes the stom- 
ach will be emptied by vomiting, or in from one 
to two hours the bowel will be purged and 
movement will have taken place all along the 
digestive tract; or, relief may come both by 
vomiting and purging. 

When a patient is suddenly and completely 
prostrated from any cause, having up to the time 
eaten heartily, and the digestive tract being there- 
fore loaded, the processes of digestion will share 
in the general decline of the bodily functions, 



ON THK MANNER OF CONDUCTING CASKS. 87 

and putrefaction changes in the digestive canal 
are likely to ensue. The most important thing 
to do is to clear out the whole digestive canal 
thoroughly. If there is any difficulty in the way 
of doing this with hot water by way of the 
stomach, let a two-ounce dose of castor oil be 
taken. If this clearing out be neglected or de- 
layed, the patient may not only be made very 
sick, but may be fatally poisoned by the products 
resulting from putrefaction in the bowel and 
stomach. Sooner or later the patient will be 
discharging "green stuff from both ends," if this 
early, prompt and thorough clearing out is not 
effected. 

63. In attempting to settle upon what a patient 
may or may not eat and drink, I treat his likes 
and dislikes with the utmost consideration. The 
only reliable guidance to the selection of foods 
is found in one's longings. One should eat and 
drink just what he wants and just as much as he 
wants; provided only that any particular longing 
is subject to the correct deductions from his 
experience in regard to that longing. 

Do not eat unless you are hungry,* then, 
whether ill or well, eat anything you want and 
as much as you want, unless your experience 



*On this subject, much that is useful and interesting will 
be found in "The True Science of Living," by E. H. Dewy, 
M. D. 



88 REPETITION DYSPEPSIA. 

with any particular items of food in respect of 
quality or quantity teaches you to do differently 
in regard to such foods. This is just what any- 
body and everybody but a dyspeptic is always 
doing. When one allows dietetic physicians or 
dietetic literature to influence him to do differ- 
ently, he sooner or later falls into the meshes of 
dyspepsia. 

During illness people are likely to be led 
astray in this respect. Thus, one says: "I never 
knew what it was to have stomach trouble till I 
had my leg broken. I was laid up four months 
then and have been dyspeptic ever since." An- 
other says: "I've been dyspeptic ever since I had 
pneumonia." 

During illness the reliable inclinations of the 
patient, the competent indications of nature, have 
been made to give way to the unreliable and in- 
competent opinion and belief of the physician. 
And the result is sometimes more serious than 
mere dyspepsia. 

64. Here is an example of this year's occur- 
rence: A lady, utterly prostrated ten weeks, was 
believed by herself, her friends and physician to 
be dying; because at first her digestion utterly 
failed, and at last she refused to take food at all. 
By direction of her physician her diet had been 
limited to the alleged foods for infants and inva- 
lids. These, not liked by the patient in the first 



ON THE MANNER OF CONDUCTING CASKS. 89 

place, had been repeated until the digestive 
apparatus refused any longer to work. That 
milk was artificially peptonized made no differ- 
ence; it simply rotted within. And from cause 
unknown the patient was supposed to have no 
longer any power to digest, nor even to appro- 
priate food artificially digested. When, in the 
eleventh week of her illness, I first saw this case 
she had taken no food except tea with milk and 
sugar for five or six days. During this brief fast 
all signs of indigestion had cleared away. To 
me the perfectly normal appearance of her tongue 
showed her to be a well woman. But she was 
starving. She was weak. The heart in particu- 
lar shared the weakness of the woman in general, 
and this showed itself in a seriously defective 
circulation of the blood. 

This patient now had to be fed in a manner 
consistent with her natural desires. She had to 
have massage in lieu of the exercise she was 
unable to take. She had to have her little 
energy carefully saved for purposes of repair and 
restoration, and none of it was to be allowed for 
talking or listening. So weak was she that she 
could not swallow scraped beef and boiled rice. 
When I mentioned beef tea in place of the meat, 
I found she objected ; it had already been over- 
done in the matter of repetition. Rice gruel she 
swallowed. On the third day of my attendance 



90 REPETITION DYSPEPSIA. 

she expressed a desire to have some boiled salt 
mackerel and potato. She had them, and her 
stomach agreed on the selection. Five times in 
the next fifteen days she had, in response to her 
own expressed desires, a dinner of boiled salt 
pork with mustard, and boiled cabbage with vin- 
egar. The stomach agreed on these and all her 
other selections. Not a single relapse occurred 
in this case, and in three weeks the patient was 
up and off to the country, where she continued 
gradually to improve until a good state of health 
was attained. 

It is not only right and proper to satisfy a 
strong natural longing for an item of food, but 
such satisfaction may be, and sometimes is, in- 
dispensable to the preservation of one's health, 
or to its recovery when one is ill. In one case 
under observation there had been for more than 
a year an almost dominant desire for candy. 
The circumstances indicated something function- 
ally wrong with the liver. The bile was deficient 
in quantity, and intestinal digestion was de- 
fective. The strong desire had been misunder- 
stood by the patient; candy was not meant, nor 
sugar from the sugar bowl. The sweetest fruits, 
dates, figs, raisins, etc., were used as freely and 
as frequently as the patient's longings prompted. 
The illness ended. The patient ate simpler meals 
and was better satisfied than he had previously 



ON THE MANNER OF CONDUCTING CASES. 9 1 

been with larger and more complicated meals. 
He was also pleased with this improvement upon 
the dose of calomel under such circumstances 
generally prescribed. 

It is just as wrong and works just as badly to 
urge upon a patient, or prescribe for his use, any 
item of food toward which he feels even a slight 
repugnance. The patient may consent, but his 
stomach will not agree on taking such food and 
will not digest it, so that it is simply left to rot 
in the digestive canal. Plain beef is oftener re- 
peatable than other meat, and is more likely to 
be perfectly well managed by the dyspeptic stom- 
ach. The same is true of rice. The same is true 
of hot water as a beverage. There would be 
small hope for a dyspeptic whose digestive appa- 
ratus would not perfectly digest a meal of beef, 
rice and hot water, all the circumstances and con- 
ditions being favorable. As a rule, therefore, a 
case can at once be temporarily put upon a diet 
of plain beefsteak broiled, plain boiled rice, and a 
cup of hot water. If the patient is really pros- 
trated, let beef tea and rice gruel be substituted 
for the meat and rice. 

But, rare though they be, cases occur with 
whom this diet, to start with, will not at all do. 
Generally, people who do not like plain boiled 
rice will at least not dislike it, and will like it when 
they have eaten it five or six times. A case is 



92 REPETITION DYSPEPSIA. 

now and then met with, however, who dislikes 
rice, either from cause unknown, or from having 
on some expedition or voyage had to subsist too 
long and too exclusively upon rice. Such a per- 
son can not be put upon a diet consisting partly 
of rice. 

Persons are also rarely met with who can not 
use fresh beef. In a recent case of mine the 
patient, aged thirty-five years, gave account of a 
slight repugnance toward fresh beef as far back 
as she could remember, and for which she could 
give no cause. She neither used fresh beef nor 
its extract voluntarily, and when she used these 
on the advice of others she suffered from indi- 
gestion. This patient has for more than twenty 
years been treated for dyspepsia, and during a 
whole one of these years she subsisted, by the 
advice of her physician^ on an exclusive diet of 
rusk and beef tea. At another time, by her phy- 
sician's advice, she ate fresh lean scraped beef for 
two weeks. At these times, as at all other forme.r 
times, she suffered only so much the more for 
the use of beef or its extract. This patient can- 
not now use the least bit of the simplest beef 
gravy with her rice. The objection to beef comes 
exclusively from the stomach. She likes, eats, 
and perfectly digests a variety of foods quite suf- 
ficient for her purposes. Among them may be 
mentioned salt mackerel, bacon, fresh and pre- 
served fruits, rice, potatoes and fresh bread. 



ON THE MANNER OF CONDUCTING CASES. 93 

65. The belief is widely prevalent that the use 
of tobacco, of alcoholic beverages, and that fast 
eating and overeating are causes of dyspepsia. 
I do not share this belief. It is true that dys- 
pepsia is in a few cases associated with the exces- 
sive use of tobacco, and this vice then is the ob- 
ject of treatment; the dyspepsia is a dependent 
illness and will take care of itself when the 
parent vice is abandoned or moderated. 

66. I have never observed a chronic case of 
dyspepsia in which I had any reason to believe 
the use of alcoholic beverages to be a cause. 
An acute paroxysm of indigestion frequently re- 
sults not so much from the use of alcoholic 
drinks as from the errors of circumstance under 
which they are taken — taken when they are in 
no sense needed. The drinking class are not 
dyspeptics, and dyspeptics are not a drinking 
class. Even if dyspepsia is in some cases depend- 
ent on the vice of excessive drinking, the vice, 
then, is the object of treatment. I would rather 
believe, however, at present, that in a dyspeptic 
the drinking vice is dependent on the dyspepsia, 
and that if the dyspepsia were cured, the vice 
would be cured also. 

6j. Fast eating is not a cause of dyspepsia. 
When it is the apparent cause, other and real 
causes can be found, most likely energy diversion 
(as explained in my second essay) will prove to 



94 REPETITION DYSPEPSIA. 

be the real cause. People are slow and fast at 
eating as they are at their other duties. Each 
one's way accords with his constitutional habit 
and is proper for him m 

When overeating is a fault, it is a vice know- 
ingly committed, and the subject does not require 
any advice in the matter. The fault generally 
lies in the circumstances which permit one to get 
too hungry. 

It is common for a dyspeptic to lose one-sixth, 
or more, of his weight. When once his digestion' 
is fairly resumed, he will have an extra demand 
for food for purposes of repair and to restore the 
lost fat. If then, until the lost weight is re- 
stored, there seems an irresistible temptation to 
overeating, it can be obviated by eating between 
the regular meals. Overeating, on the part of 
one who must eat for purposes of restoration and 
repair, is not an evil unless it is attended by 
evil results. Let such a person have his meals 
in peace, and an hour's rest of mind after each 
meal, and the apparent evil of overeatiug will be 
fully compensated for. 

68. When a patient is to all appearances fairly 
on the road to recovery, he is likely to become 
reckless and indiscreet. It is the rule with pa- 
tients to suffer relapses after a seemingly good 
start has been made. They violate instructions, or 
misunderstand them. Though all are subject to 



ON THK MANNER OF CONDUCTING CASKS. 95 

the same principles, it is none the less true that 
each case is a law unto itself, and it sometimes 
requires no small amount of work to learn just 
what the patient may or may not do, and under 
what circumstances and conditions. These re- 
lapses serve a useful purpose on the part of the 
patient. They constitute the experience which 
confirms to him the truth of what the doctor 
has taught him. 



II.— ENERGY-DIVERSION 
DYSPEPSIA. 

ARGUMENT. 

i. Experience shows, and the doctrine of the 
correlation of forces enables us to understand, 
that the sum total of a man's available working 
energy may be evolved entirely in the form of 
muscular force, or entirely in the form of mental 
force. If a man, with all his might, evolves work 
of one form in a given space of time, he will not 
during the same time have any available energy 
for producing work of any other form. 

The immediate source of a man's energy is 
the food he eats. And the energy of the food 
of the man is analogous to the energy of the 
fuel that runs the steam engine. And all the 
available forces of the man, derived from the 
food he eats, are as certainly correlated as are 
the various forces which can be derived from 
the fuel which is used to run the steam engine. 

2. Besides muscular, and mental, there are 

some other possible forms which the energy of 

man may assume, and I am glad to find that 

Prof. Alexander Bain recognizes the exist- 

(96) 



ARGUMENT. 97 

ence of a "digestive power" and speaks of it 
as a physical force in the same category as 
"muscular power and animal heat and so on."* 
Of course, one could not for a moment doubt 
the presence of the power of digestion, but that 
the digestive power is a distinct form of energy 
will appear all the more convincing when we find 
that it can be diverted or transmuted to other 
forms and for other purposes. 

Of the total amount of energy evolved from 
the fuel burned, not all is available for work; a 
share of it being used simply to run the engine. 
A share of the power of the horse is required 
to draw the wagon, and only the remainder of 
his power is available for transporting the load. 
A share of the energy of a man's food is used 
up in maintaining all the processes that make up 
the living of a healthy individual. What share 
of energy he may have remaining, may be called 
his surplus energy, and is available for work. 

3. Much might be said on the quantitative 
variability of this surplus or working energy. 
It varies in different persons, and at different 
times or ages of the same person. And it varies 
with the quantity of food consumed and with 
the amount that is digested and absorbed. The 
most remarkable quantitative variation of a man's 



'The Conservation of Energy," p. 224. 

7 



98 KNKRGY-DIVKRSION DYSPEPSIA. 

working energy is that which occurs several 
times daily, increased by foods digested, and 
diminished by work done. A steam engine is 
usually fed, so to speak, in such a way as to keep 
its supply of working force up to, or nearly at, 
a certain determined maximum degree, and is 
equally powerful during all the hours of its 
working day. Civilized man, however, takes in 
his maximum amount of fuel or food, and soon 
realizes his maximum amount of working energy, 
and then uses up that energy often to the 
very last unit before he takes in fuel again. In 
the case of the machine, the fire is kept going 
constantly. In the case of the man, the fire is 
freshly built up at somewhat regular intervals. 

4. One would not expect to turn on steam and 
put his engine to work immediately after the 
fuel had been put into the furnace and the fire 
lighted. But it often happens (after-dinner 
speeches, for example) that persons will attempt 
to draw heavily upon their stock of energy very 
soon after they have taken food, at times when 
their available energy is reduced to its minimum 
limit. This is wrong always, and it will be shown 
that, under certain frequently-prevailing circum- 
stances, severe penalties have been suffered for 
committing errors of this kind. That a tired 
man is able to work at all, with body or mind, 
just after eating, seems to be due to the power 



ARGUMENT. 99 

of drawing upon his reserve store of fuel in the 
form of fat, for example. This reserve supply, 
however, may not always be easily drawn upon. 
So it seems. When one's energy has been ex- 
hausted before eating, he finds himself disin- 
clined to work just after eating. And when he 
does set to work vigorously, in spite of the dis- 
inclination, it is not so much the result of his 
own choice or determination, but is due rather 
to the stimulus of some outside necessity — the 
objective stimulus we may call it. 

5. It has often happened that a man has suf- 
fered from indigestion for running to catch a 
train just after eating. It has often happened 
that firemen have suffered from indigestion on 
being called out just after eating to make their 
utmost mental and muscular efforts at saving life 
and property. A good deal of indigestion for- 
merly prevailed among the employees on the 
Market Street cable-cars of San Francisco. 
Their time for the midday meal was only just 
enough for its hurried eating and not enough for 
a rest afterwards. "The same thing is seen in 
an extreme degree in the well-known experiment 
of causing a dog to run violently after eating? 
in which case- digestion is entirely suspended." 
— Dr. S. Wier Mitchell, It also sometimes hap- 
pens that persons will suffer from indigestion 
from the violent mental exertion involved, for 



IOO ENERGY-DIVERSION DYSPEPSIA. 

example, in an angry dispute just after eating 
heartily. Generally in such cases some offense 
to the person serves as an objective stimulus in 
response to which he automatically makes, or 
attempts to make, with all his mental might, 
much effort of the defensive or retributive kind. 
6. Evidently indigestion does not in every- 
body's case follow upon the most violent and 
prolonged efforts of body or mind. So whether 
it does or not must depend upon some circum- 
stances or conditions. These we will not attempt 
to inquire into, except to observe what on super- 
ficial inspection appears to serve as an explana- 
tion of the distinction between cases in which 
indigestion occurs and cases in which, under like 
circumstances, it does not occur. The indiges- 
tion, in such cases as those I have cited, appears 
not to occur in vigorous young persons, nor in 
older persons who have at least a moderate share 
of fat in their structure. It appears to occur in 
lean persons of almost any age, especially those 
who employ their minds with all their might to 
the fullest extent of their time.* 



*The fat which an animal carries furnishes force for the 
continuation of work after the supply of force-yielding 
food last taken in has been exhausted. 

Its fat is the fuel and furnishes the force that carries the 
migrating bird many hundreds of miles without food or 
rest. 



ARGUMENT. lOI 

7. I have considered the digestive force as a 
part of the energy which is used up in the 
physical maintenance of the animal body. This 
energy of repair or maintenance, or, as we may 
call it, the running energy, is generally reserved 
for that purpose alone; but we have the power 
of diverting it from its proper function, at times 
when we have exhausted our supply of working 
energy and are yet tempted, contrary to our 
inclinations, to continue longer at work. It is 
not difficult to observe, sometimes in cases of 
overworked persons, that the details of repair 
and maintenance have been neglected in their 
animal economy. It is particularly easy to ob- 
serve, as in the examples cited, that digestion 
becomes inefficient or stops entirely during 
mental or bodily efforts that are extraordinary 
and prolonged. The examples cited show that 
such excessive demand can be made upon the 
working energy as will soon exhaust the supply, 
and cause the diversion of the digestive energy 



A good case, for example, is that of the plover which 
migrates regularly between the Hawaiian Islands and 
California, and must fly at least two thousand miles with- 
out food or rest. 

The fat which an animal carries is in the strictest sense 
a storage battery. 

It is never the lean man that can make such prolonged 
and vigorous mental effort as is involved in long argu- 
ments before juries and before legislative bodies. 



102 ENERGY-DIVERSION DYSPEPSIA. 

from its proper function to be consumed for 
work also. 

8. All the several animal energies are corre- 
lated, and are transmutable. Observing the 
various organs of the digestive apparatus, we 
find muscular tissues and nervous tissues, and 
we infer that muscular energy and nervous en- 
ergy are involved in the processes of digestion. 
But these two forms of energy are correlated and 
mutually transmutable. And the testimony of 
many a dyspeptic goes to show that during meals, 
and just after eating, actual mental work is done 
at the expense of energy that would otherwise 
be employed in the processes of digestion. The 
famous dyspeptic, Thomas Carlyle, recorded 
many instances, in his own experience, of suffer- 
ing severely for talking during and immediately 
after dinners. And Shakespeare knew this when 
he wrote, "Unquiet meals make ill digestions."* 

Carlyle's talk was of the high-priced quality, 
so to speak. His talk at a dinner party cost him 
his best mental energy, and generally cost him 
all he had at the time. By almost incessant men- 
tal effort, Carlyle kept his stock of working 
energy almost constantly reduced to its lowest 
limit; so that for several hours' talk, begun with 
dinner and ending after it, he exhausted not only 



*Lady Abbess, in "Comedy of Errors. " 



ARGUMENT. IO3 

his working energy, but borrowed, also, too heav- 
ily of the energy which runs the apparatus of 
digestion, after which he was able to write: "Last 
night, greatly against wont, I went out to dine. 
. . . A dull evening, not worth awakening 
for at four in the morning, with the dance of aH 
the devils round you." That the digestive en- 
ergy is correlated with mental energy, and is 
transmutable to it, has now to some extent been 
shown, and will be shown yet more conclusively. 
9. One of the causes of indigestion is the diver- 
sion of the digestive energy from the processes 
of digestion, and the appropriation of that energy 
for working purposes. Many dyspeptics owe 
their indigestion alone to this cause. And for 
my purpose of classification, I distinguish them 
as the energy-diversion dyspeptics. The class 
consists almost wholly of lean people, and is 
made up mainly from those adult brain workers 
whose occupation involves difficult mental effort, 
in which there is little or nothing of the habitual, 
automatic or routine quality. This class includes 
persons who, in addition to an otherwise sufficient 
day's work for mind and body, are, simultane- 
ously with such work, busy with mental effort 
also, and prolong the extra mental effort into the 
hours of leisure, rest and recreation. Exception- 
ally bright but delicate school children are dys- 
peptics of this energy-diversion class. 



104 ENERGY-DIVERSION DYSPEPSIA. 

10. To make the idea of this volitional energy 
a little more vivid and distinct, I need only 
point to the well-known relation between the 
maximum number of working hours that make 
up a day's work in the various occupations, 
ranging from the purely unskilled physical to the 
purely volitional mental. The occupations of 
men might be ranged into a half-dozen grades, 
according to the amount of volitional mental en- 
ergy involved. And we would have no such 
energy in the case of the purely unskilled physi- 
cal laborer who, for example, is shoveling sand; 
and would have only such energy in the case of 
the purely mental worker who, for example, is 
busy with the marshaling of hosts of facts for 
the purpose of proving a doctrine. Once trained 
to the work, a man can easily shovel sand ten 
hours a day, six days in the week. A great 
variety of clerical work is sufficient to exhaust 
the power of the worker at six to seven hours 
per day for five and a half days in the week. 
And for such work as Charles Darwin did always, 
and Thomas Carlyle did much of the time, four 
hours per day proved quite enough, and three 
hours were all that Darwin could do a great deal 
of his time. The higher the form in which we 
employ our surplus working energy, the shorter 
is its daily duration. 

ii. When a man is tired he should ease up, 



ARGUMENT. IO5 

slow down, or come to a full stop in his work. 
He knows this without being told. He knows 
that his inclinations and feelings guide him per- 
fectly during health. But there are allurements 
to do more work. The inclinations, often disre- 
garded, may cease to be felt, may cease to serve 
as a hint to stop work for a time, or for the day. 
Darwin often acknowledged doing overwork, and 
more than once expressed himself as having no 
warning sensation of the fact. The special fea- 
ture of mental overwork that concerns us in this 
essay, is that it involves the diversion and appro- 
priation for work, or attempts at work, of the 
energy that belongs to the apparatus of diges- 
tion. 

12. The overworked and overtired man is not 
well qualified to make the most and best of his 
next installment of food. His digestive appara- 
tus is without sufficient force for operation. His 
dinner is not made to yield all its force. And 
the next sitting at work will be proportionately 
less fruitful of results. The maximum quantity 
and quality of work are not obtainable without 
perfect digestion. The worst fault, however, and 
the special error of the energy-diversion dyspeptic, 
consists in commencing work before his food has 
had time to yield any of its energy for the pur- 
pose — like trying to get work out of an engine 
before steam is got up. By this error the dys- 



Io6 ENERGY-DIVERSION DYSPEPSIA. 

peptic simply diverts the digestive energy for 
purposes of work, or for purposes of what often 
prove to be unsuccessful attempts at work, but 
no less disastrous for that reason. An unsuc- 
cessful attempt costs no less energy than -if it 
were successful. Digestion falls as far short of 
completion as the period of rest after eating is 
incomplete. There will be some digestion, more 
or less, and some work is possible, also more or 
less, generally less. There will also be some in- 
digestion, some rotting of the food. And there 
will be more or less illness, the nature of which 
has been described, explained and accounted for 
in the preceding essay. 

13. The several nondescript ills that are so 
often spoken of as distinct diseases, and which 
have been styled mal-nutrition, anaemia, hysteria, 
nervous debility, nervous exhaustion and nervous 
prostration, are results of indigestion, no matter 
what the cause of indigestion itself may be. 
These dependent ills, however, are more common 
among the energy-diversion dyspeptics, because 
the dyspeptic of this class is a more persistent 
and chronic sufferer. He is poor in energy be- 
cause his occupation requires its constant paying 
out, and also presents constant temptation to 
pay out more than he has to spare. I have said 
enough of these dependent ills in my first essay 
(articles 44 to 47 inclusive) to serve the purposes 



ARGUMENT. I07 

of this essay as well. In my first essay (article 
41) I made brief mention of functional disease of 
the heart as often present and dependent on indi- 
gestion. The energy-diversion dyspeptic often 
suffers from functional disturbances of the circu- 
lation, and the patient is then generally alleged 
to have heart disease. The alleged heart disease 
subsides as promptly as the indigestion is cured 
and some strength is recovered. This alleged 
heart disease is more prevalent, in a mild way, 
among the diversion class, but is, I believe, more 
acute, abrupt and violent among the monotonous 
diet dyspeptics. When the patient has heart 
disease independently of his dyspepsia, the func- 
tional disturbance will be augmented by the in- 
digestion, and may be augmented to a degree 
that may prove fatal. I have known this to oc- 
cur, and I suspect it occurs oftener than we are 
aware of. The individual who has heart disease 
can least of all men afford to be a dyspeptic. 

14. There is no good reason why hearts 
should be structurally any more perfect than 
eyes. About one person in five employs the aid 
of glasses for purposes of vision, and many 
more than one in five are in need of such aid. A 
heart will not necessarily wear out the sooner 
because it is defective in structure, any more 
than an eye which imperfectly serves the purposes 
of vision. There are then a great many hearts 



108 ENERGY-DIVERSION DYSPEPSIA. 

which are more or less imperfect in respect of 
structure; and the owners of them are generally 
unaware of the fact. That a heart is structurally- 
defective does not mean that it serves its ordi- 
nary purposes any the less well. There is a 
wide range of effort that is required of hearts. 
Many a heart, doing its ordinary every-day work 
perfectly well, will be found, by virtue of struc- 
tural defect, to serve its owner inadequately in 
his attempts at fast running, fast going up stairs 
mountain climbing, heavy lifting or pulling. In 
these extraordinary bodily efforts of the person, 
the heart must also make extraordinary effort. 
The circulating blood must move with greater 
rapidity and with greater force. And it is under 
such circumstances that the defective heart is 
observed to be unable to move the blood along 
with sufficient speed and force. The owners of 
such hearts can not safely indulge in extra- 
ordinary and prolonged muscular efforts; but 
with appropriate care and restraint, intuitive or 
prescribed, there is no good evidence to show 
that they do not live just about as long as those 
who have structurally perfect hearts. 

15. The heart is a compound pump, and con- 
sists principally of muscular tissue; it is a com- 
plicated muscle. The power of this pump that 
keeps the circulating blood in motion, or the 
power of the muscle that constitutes the heart, 



ARGUMENT. IO9 

is not inherent in the muscle itself, but has the 
same origin as the power of any other muscle of 
the body, the same origin as any other force of 
the animal. It is derived from the digested 
foods. The power of the heart is as variable as 
that of any other muscle, and its available force 
varies under the same circumstances that other 
muscles vary in force. A heart that is mechan- 
ically defective in structure may be unable to 
propel the circulating blood with all the force 
and speed which the heart muscle has the power 
of exerting. It may therefore happen that a 
heart which appears powerful, will fail to do its 
share in particular of an extraordinary physical 
effort of the person in general. Physically, a 
man may be said to be as strong as his heart. 
The heart, being mechanically inefficient for 
extraordinary service, is said to be diseased, 
although this may only mean that the heart is 
structurally defective, and is no more serious 
than to say that the eye is diseased because it 
can not focus rays of light, or can not adjust 
itself to near vision, or to far vision. 

16. We easily understand that a man must 
become physically weak when underfed, also 
when his food profits him nothing because not 
digested. We are also to bear in mind that the 
heart shares in this weakness. An ill-fed per- 
son means an ill-fed heart. The brain worker 



IIO ENERGY-DIVERSION DYSPEPSIA. 

who is muscularly weak, and who habitually 
uses up his mental energies to the utmost unit, 
and habitually continues his work beyond the 
point of fatigue, will, as we have shown, draw 
upon the energies that are reserved for mainte- 
nance, for digestion, for circulation, and so on. 
We have seen that some such mental workers 
become dyspeptics; their digestion failing be- 
cause the energy for that purpose is diverted to 
mental uses. Just the same explanation ac- 
counts for the functional inefficiency of the heart 
that is defective in structure. The overtime 
brain worker, especially the one who has not the 
capacity for the quality or quantity of the work 
he undertakes, draws upon the energies of main- 
tenance in general, and the result shows itself 
in incomplete digestion and an inefficient circu- 
lation. And when the circulation is observed to 
be faulty, and the heart is examined, the struc- 
tural defect may be deduced from the circum- 
stances and conditions of the heart's sounds. 
Irregularity of the working of the structurally 
defective heart, when it is observed in connec- 
tion with dyspepsia, in a person with much 
reduced energy, may be taken to depend wholly 
upon indigestion or the cause of indigestion. It 
is very common to take notice of, and treat the 
patient for, disease of the heart, and entirely dis- 
regard the indigestion of the case. I think it 



ARGUMENT. Ill 

must be impossible to show that such treatment 
ever results in any good to the patient. 

17. Nervous prostration, an alarming expres- 
sion, represents an unimportant condition in 
which the energy-diversion dyspeptic often finds 
himself. A condition of being powerless to 
succeed with mental work. It is due to indi- 
gestion and the resulting failure of the supply of 
energy. Let there be absolute rest from voli- 
tional effort of body and mind thirty to sixty 
minutes after eating, and there is an end to 
nervous prostration. 

18. The energy-diversion dyspeptic is so 
generally a sufferer from insomnia, that insomnia 
seems to depend upon the same cause as indi- 
gestion. Incidentally I should speak of insomnia 
under circumstances that are entirely outside of 
the sphere of this essay; and of these outside 
details first Tea or coffee with the evening 
meal keeps many persons awake a large share of 
the night. A half or small cup of strong coffee 
will generally not interfere with sleep; at any 
rate one can reduce the amount of his evening 
coffee or tea so as to lose no sleep on their 
account. And it is often better to reduce than 
to abstain. I have known the tea of the noon 
meal to affect the person till past midnight and 
deprive him of a large share of his sleep. 

Although the cause of insomnia is sometimes 



112 ENERGY-DIVERSION DYSPEPSIA. 

very simple, and very near at hand, the patient 
may suffer many months before it is found out. 

19. The sense of hunger serves as a cause of 
insomnia in sensitive people. Many persons are 
afraid to eat at night just before retiring, and, if 
they have even a slight sense of hunger, will 
sleep the less for it. There are, on the other 
hand, perhaps a greater number of persons who 
eat shortly before retiring, and the man of 
mental occupation will sleep the better for doing 
so. One should eat only a little at night, just 
enough to dispense with the sense of hunger; 
more than that may result in ill effects. A com- 
plex meal at night will do better than a simple 
one. Bread alone would not do as well as bread 
and butter, or a sandwich, or apiece of pie, even 
mince pie. The insomnia which is incidental to 
suffering from indigestion at night needs no 
explanation beyond what may be said of the 
cause of such indigestion. Any insomnia that 
may be due to mental overwork, or work con- 
tinued beyond the point of fatigue, need not be 
considered here, for the cause of it is identical 
with the cause of the indigestion in the same 
case, 

20. The most important insomnia that we 
have to do with is a direct result of doing mental 
work at night. We find a great deal of this in- 
somnia among energy-diversion dyspeptics. It 



ARGUMENT. 113 

is true that night work under certain circum- 
stances is the cause. How this insomnia is re- 
lated to dyspepsia I cannot say. It is at least 
associated with, if not dependent upon, indiges- 
tion. It seems that the particular condition of 
night work which makes it a cause of insomnia 
is that it shall be overwork, the work of one who 
during the day has already done to the extent 
of his capacity. In the testimony of two famous 
sufferers and habitual overworkers we will ob- 
serve that insomnia was always associated with 
mental occupation, and sometimes very hard 
work, during the evening and often far into the 
night. 

21. In the first essay, I have already expressed 
my belief in a mental inhibition faculty, to which 
we owe our ability of stopping or diverting our 
minds from that automatic and useless activity 
which keeps us awake when we wish to sleep. 
That one is sometimes for hours an unwilling 
and sleepy witness to his own senseless thinking, 
and is unable to stop it, seems to me to be due 
to the tired and therefore inefficient working 
condition of the mind in general, and of the in- 
hibition, restraining, or governing faculty in par- 
ticular. All due to mental overwork. Suffering 
from insomnia, a man seems to be in the position 
of witness to his own delirium. The volitional 
thinking, that constitutes the work of the day 
8 



114 ENERGY-DIVERSION DYSPEPSIA. 

or evening, having been continued past the point 
of fatigue, some of the faculties continue action 
automatically for hours after the person has 
stopped volitional effort and wishes to rest and 
tries to do so. 

22. The mental activity that keeps one awake 
is automatic in character. It does not indicate 
that there is an abundance of mental energy 
available, but rather, that the energy has been so 
far used up that none, or not enough, remains 
available for controlling and restraining the facul- 
ties. The inhibition faculty is incapacitated by 
fatigue, and will not serve its ordinary purpose 
until some rest is had and some energy recov- 
ered. The energy for inhibition, for restraining 
the faculties from this automatic thinking, is 
soon supplied by the little food taken by those 
who eat shortly before retiring. And this 
seems to account for bedtime eating as a suc- 
cessful means of preventing insomnia. Expe- 
rience with insomnia will teach one to antici- 
pate a waking spell, to recognize the likelihood 
of lying awake hours by the time he has lain 
awake minutes. If, then, there is no special 
contra-inclination, one should take a little food. 
This procedure is very successful in cases of in- 
somnia with absence of dyspepsia. 

It is also well to notice that, at times when 
one is kept awake by automatic mental activity, 



ARGUMENT. 115 

if the conditions be at all favorable, sleep can 
generally be induced by briefly continued efforts 
at volitional thinking. Volitional effort, of course, 
stops the automatic; and it generally happens 
that one falls asleep by the time the volitional 
efforts have continued a half minute, more or 
less. This element of volitional mental effort is 
common to, and the essential part of, the schemes 
that we now and then read of in journals, for in- 
ducing sleep in cases of insomnia. It is easy to 
see that there is volitional effort in the determin- 
ation to count, abstractly, or the strokes of a 
clock; to imagine seeing one's own breath, and 
so on. And as good a scheme as any of the 
class, if not the best, is to try to keep awake, 
keeping one's eyes open. When properly situ- 
ated for sleeping, it becomes very difficult to 
keep purposely awake. The worst insomniac 
finds it hard to keep intentionally awake for the 
purpose of listening to some one reading or 
speaking. 

23. I have now stated what I have found to be 
the cause of indigestion in a class of persons 
whom I have designated by the descriptive title 
of energy-diversion dyspeptics. And I have also 
explained the occurrence of several ills which I 
hold to depend either upon indigestion, or, with 
it, upon the same cause. What I am writing 
about the causes of indigestion is based upon a 



Tl6 ENERGY-DIVERSION DYSPEPSIA. 

great deal of personal experience and extensive 
observation extending back more than twenty 
years. It is not practicable to refer to the details 
of suffering, and the circumstances and conditions 
under which they occur, in the lives of private 
individuals yet living. But such liberty can for 
purposes of proof be taken, by the consent of all 
concerned, with the lives of great men now gone, 
whose record has been published, and concern- 
ing whom any additional particulars or interpre- 
tations are eagerly welcomed, whether they 
simply cast new light on the great characters 
themselves, or illuminate the uncertain path of 
the admiring follower. One man can learn from 
another man's experience, and there can be no 
reasonable doubt that the energy-diversion dys- 
peptics of to-day can learn much,, and perhaps 
enough for their purpose, from the forty years' 
suffering of Charles Darwin, and the fifty-five 
years' experience of Thomas Carlyle as dyspep- 
tics of this class. Dyspepsia and its dependent 
ills are as mysterious to the more recent suffer- 
ers as they were to Darwin and Carlyle. And 
that, I may repeat, is my apology for writing this 
book. 

EVIDENCE FROM CHARLES DARWIN. 

I. In "The Life and Letters of Charles Dar- 
win." edited by his son, Francis Darwin, we shall 



KVIDKNCK FROM CHARI^S DARWIN T17 

find an interesting, instructive and authentic 
record of his illness and suffering, extending 
through a period of fifty years of his life. 

The biographer writes of Darwin, "that for 
nearly forty years he never knew one day of the 
health of ordinary men, and that thus his life was 
one long struggle against the weariness and 
strain of sickness. " 

Not much stress is laid by the biographer on 
the occasional illness of Darwin during the ten 
or more years preceding the last forty of his life. 
For our purpose, however, it will be important 
to notice all allusions to his earlier ills, and ob- 
serve the circumstances and conditions under 
which he suffered. 

2. In studying Charles Darwin as a dyspeptic, 
it seemed to me that every mention of, or allu- 
sion to, his illness, or any of the circumstances 
or conditions under which he suffered, had some 
important meaning, either alone or together with 
other items of the record. I believe, therefore, 
it will serve my purpose best to use every item of 
the biography which will throw any light on any 
aspect of his illness, at any time of his life except- 
ing the extremes of youth and age. 

And I believe it will be best to present the 
facts of Darwin's ills in the order in which they 
appear in the biography, which varies but little 
from the order in which they occurred. 



Il8 ENERGY-DIVERSION DYSPEPSIA. 

There will be many repetitions, but under 
varying circumstances. And the fact of many 
repetitions will the better show the continued 
persistence of Darwin's errors and the penalties 
that were always associated with them. 

3. The biography of Charles Darwin, by his 
son, Francis Darwin, from which I gather the 
particulars of his illness, consists of two volumes. 
For every extract made therefrom, I will refer to 
the page from which I take it. What state- 
ments are quoted literally will be indicated by 
quotation marks. Statements which I take from 
the biography, but express in my own words, 
which I will rarely do, will be indicated alone by 
page references. 

All the data I have, two or three items ex- 
cepted, relative to Charles Darwin's health, are 
here, once for all, acknowledged to be due to 
the two volumes by his son, Francis Darwin. 

It will be observed that, with four exceptions, 
the extracts as far as page 171 are from the first 
volume of the biography, and those beyond page 
171 are from the second volume. It will there- 
fore not be necessary to specify the volume from 
which an extract is taken. 

4. The following collection of extracts, relative 
to the illness of Charles Darwin, will be ac- 
companied by as little comment and explanation 
as possible. It should therefore be stated here, 



KVIDKNCK FROM CHARLES DARWIN. H9 

at the outset, that the extracts are intended to 
show that Mr. Darwin for more than forty years 
habitually committed those errors which serve 
as the causes of the indigestion of the energy- 
diversion class of dyspeptics. 

5. The reader will observe that Mr. Darwin, 
in addition to having been a great sufferer from 
indigestion, also suffered from all the dependent 
ills. 

He had evidently a structurally defective heart, 
and several times during his life, and obviously, 
near the close of it, the functional disturbance of 
his circulation was very conspicuous. A good 
item of evidence of the defect of Darwin's heart, 
was the fact, as stated by himself, that the sum- 
mer of 1842, when he was about thirty-three 
years of age, was the last time in his life that he 
"was ever strong enough to climb mountains or 
to take long walks such as are necessary for 
geological work" (59). 

It will appear that Darwin suffered a great 
deal from insomnia, and was also often, when 
thoroughly disabled, in the condition called 
nervous prostration. 

6. The reader should particularly notice: — 

I. That Darwin's work was of the purely 
volitional mental kind, requiring his highest 
grade of energy, and exhausting it in less time 
than any other kind of work would do. 



120 ENERGY-DIVERSION DYSPEPSIA. 

II. That he worked with all his might, gen- 
erally up to, and often beyond, the point of 
fatigue. 

III. That what he considered his day's work 
was done between eight and half past nine o'clock, 
and between half past ten and twelve, or a quarter 
past — all in the forenoon; three to three and a 
quarter hours, the one part just after breakfast, 
the other part shortly before the noon meal 

(90- 

IV. The persistent determination to keep busy 

all the day and evening; and when his powers 
were insufficient for the heavier kinds of mental 
occupation, he fell to the lighter kinds. 

V. That during times of recreation he em- 
ployed his mind to some extent in making 
observations. 

VI. That he took no one day in seven as a 
day of rest. 

VII. That the easiest kind of walking was 
difficult for him, his energies being kept down 
to a state of exhaustion by his mental work. 

VIII. That he resorted to holidays as a rule 
only when forced by illness to stop work and 
rest. 

IX. That on excursions, for rest, recreation, 
and recovery, he did not really rest, but em- 
ployed his mind in making observations, collect- 
ing data, reading books, writing letters, etc. 



EVIDKNCK FROM CHARGES DARWIN. 121 

X. That at the water-cure establishments, to 
which he frequently resorted, but only when 
forced by illness to stop work, he generally re- 
covered his health — his digestion sleep and 
energies. The regulations of the establishment 
prevented him from working, and the enforced 
rest was the secret of his prompt recovery and 
recuperation; the procedures of the water-cure 
being merely incidental, and useful as passive 
exercise and diversion, and as a means upon 
which to hinge the patient's faith and the pro- 
prietor's bill. 

XI. That he did not always recover at the 
water-cure; when it will also be noticed that he 
employed his mind during his stay, with revi- 
sions, correspondence, etc., or at least with read- 
ing; thus eliminating the element of rest from 
his sojourn at the establishment. 

XII. That Darwin's health was alternately 
better and worse. With work he became ill; 
with rest he became better, and again set to work 
in always the same erroneous way, to become 
ill again, to be again forced to take another 
period of rest, and so on, for more than forty 
years. And if his recoveries were often incom- 
plete it was because his rests were incomplete. 

7. In May, 1873, Darwin, replying to some 
questions by Mr. Galton, wrote relative to his 
health: "Good when young, bad for last thirty- 
three years." 



12 2 KN3RGY-DIVKRSI0N DYSPEPSIA. 

Relative to "energy of body, etc.," he wrote: 
"Energy shown by much activity, and whilst I 
had health, power of resisting fatigue. I and 
one other man were alone able to fetch water for 
a large party of officers and sailors utterly pros- 
trated. Some of my expeditions in South 
America were adventurous. An early riser in 
the morning" (II, 356). 

This shows that Darwin dated the period of 
his bad health from 1840, when he was about 
thirty-one years of age. There is no conclusive 
evidence that Darwin's ill health was to any ex- 
tent due to any hereditary influence. To some 
extent his father, Dr. R. W. Darwin, suffered 
from gout (II, 356); and that he (the father) 
had at least some time suffered from indigestion 
seems to be indicated by the statement that he 
could never eat cheese (I, 14), and that he was 
in the habit of drinking hot water in the evening 
after his dinner (I, 16). 

8. On December 27, 1831, Darwin sailed with 
the Beagle on her famous voyage of circumnavi- 
gation. The voyage lasted four years and nine 
months. Concerning the time spent at Plymouth 
awaiting the departure of the ship, he wrote: 
"These two months at Plymouth were the most 
miserable which I ever spent, though I exerted 
myself in various ways. I was out of spirits at 
the thought of leaving all my'family and friends 



EVIDENCE FROM CHARI.ES DARWIN. 1 2% 

for so long a time, and the weather seemed to 
me inexpressibly gloomy. I was also troubled 
with palpitation and pain about the heart, and 
like many a young ignorant man, especially one 
with a smattering of medical knowledge, was 
convinced that I had heart disease. I did not 
consult any doctor, as I fully expected to hear 
the verdict that I was not fit for the voyage, and 
I was resolved to go at all hazards" (53, 54). 

9. Of the time between his return to England 
(October 2, 1836) and his marriage (Jan 29, 
1839), Darwin wrote: "These two years and 
three months were the most active ones which I 
ever spent, though I was occasionally unwell, 
and so lost some time" (56). "During these 
two years I took several short excursions as a 
relaxation, and one longer one to the Parallel 
Roads ofGlen Roy" (57). 

It already appears thus early in his career 
(before 1839), that he is working at science with 
all his might to the fullest endurable extent of 
his time. He is already overworked and already 
suffering for it. On the excursion for relaxation 
to Glen Roy he gathers data for a paper ex- 
plaining the Parallel Roads. That is to say, 
instead of an excursion for relaxation, this proved 
to be a working expedition. 

"As I was not able to work all day at science, 
I read a good deal during these two years on 



124 KNKRGY-DIVKRSION DYSPKPSIA. 

various subjects" (57), suggesting that, if he 
could have done so, he would have worked all 
day at science. 

IO. Of the time between his marriage and 
settling at Down, he wrote: ''During the three 
years and eight months whilst we resided in 
London, I did less scientific work, though I 
worked as hard as I possibly could, than during 
any other equal length of time in my life. This 
was owing to frequently recurring unwellness, 
and to one long and serious illness. ,, 

4 The greater part of my time, when I could do any- 
thing, was devoted to my work on 'Coral Reefs.' . . . 
This book, though a small one, cost me twenty months 
of hard work, as I had to read every work on the Islands 
of the Pacific, and to consult many charts" (58). 

' 'Nor did I ever intermit collecting facts bearing on the 
origin of species; and I could sometimes do this when I 
could do nothing else from illness" (58). 

11. "In the summer of 1842 I was stronger than I had 
been for some time, and I took a little tour by myself in 
North Wales, for the sake of observing the effects of the 
old glaciers which formerly filled all the larger valleys. 
. . . This excursion interested me greatly, and it was 
the last time I was ever strong enough to climb moun- 
tains or to take long walks such as are necessary for 
geological work" (59). 

12. ' 'During the early part of our life in London, I was 
strong enough to go into general society, and saw a good 
deal of several scientific men" (59). 

1 'Whilst living in London, I attended as regularly as I 
could the meetings of several scientific societies, and 
acted as secretary to the Geological Society. But such 



KVIDKNCK FROM CHARXKS DARWIN. 1 25 

attendance, and ordinary society, suited my health so 
badly that we resolved to live in the country, which we 
both preferred and have never repented of" (64). 

13. He settled at Down, September 14, 1842. 

c 'Few persons can have lived a more retired life than 
we have done. Besides short visits to the houses of re- 
lations, and occasionally to the seaside or elsewhere, we 
have gone nowhere." 

"During the first part of our residence we went a little 
into society, and received a few friends here; but my 
health almost always suffered from the excitement, violent 
shivering and vomiting attacks being thus brought on." 

1< I have therefore been compelled for many years to 
give up all dinner parties, and this has been somewhat 
of a deprivation to me, as such parties always put me 
into high spirits. From the same cause I have been able 
to invite here very few scientific acquaintances" (64, 65). 

14. "My chief enjoyment and sole employment 
throughout life has been scientific work; and the excite- 
ment from such work makes me, for the time, forget, or 
drives quite away, my daily discomfort." (65). 

1 'I record in a little diary which I have always kept, 
that my three geological books ('Coral Reefs' included) 
consumed four and a half years steady work; and now it 
is ten years since my return to England. How much 
time have I lost by illness?" (65). 

Referring to his work on 'Cirripedia', he wrote: 

"Although I was employed during eight years on this 
work; yet I record in my diary that about two years out 
of this time was lost by illness." 

15. "On this account I went in 1848 for some months 
to Malvern for hydropathic treatment, which did me 
much good, so that on my return home I was able to 
resume work." 



126 ENKRGY-DI VERSION DYSPEPSIA. 

' 'So much was I out of health that when my dear father 
died on November 13, 1848, I was unable to attend his 
funeral, or to act as one of his executors" (66). 

16. "In September, 1858, I set to work by the strong 
advice of Lyell and Hooker to prepare a volume on the 
transmutation of species, but was often interrupted by 
ill health, and short visits to Dr. Lane's delightful hydro- 
pathic establishment at Moor Park" (70). 

17. "On January 1st, i860, 1 began arranging my notes 
for my work on the 'Variation of Animals and Plants 
under Domestication'; but it was not published until the 
beginning of 1868; the delay having been caused partly 
by frequent illnesses, one of which lasted seven months, 
and partly by being tempted to publish on other subjects 
which at the time interested me more" (73). 

18. "In the autumn of 1864 I finished a long paper on 
Climbing Plants' and sent it to the Linnean Society. 
The wTiting of this paper cost me four months; but I was 
so unwell when I received the proof sheets that I was 
forced to leave them very badly and often obscurely ex- 
pressed. The paper was little noticed, but when in 1875 
it was corrected and published as a separate book it 
sold well" (75). 

19. "The 'Descent of Man' took me three years to write, 
but then as usual some of this time was lost by ill health, 
and some was consumed by preparing new editions and 
other minor works" (76). 

20. Writing in May, 1881, of having lost to a 
great extent his aesthetic tastes, and that even 
as a schoolboy he took intense delight in Shakes- 
peare, etc., he says: — 

" I have tried lately to read Shakespeare, and found 
it so intolerably dull that it nauseated me" (81). 

21. "My habits are methodical, and this has been of 



EVIDENCE FROM CHARI^S DARWIN. 1 27 

not a little use for my particular line of work. Lastly, I 
have had ample leisure from not having to earn my own 
bread. Even ill health, though it has annihilated several 
years of my life, has saved me from the distractions of 
society and amusement" (85). 

The preceding extracts are from the one auto- 
biographical chapter of the work quoted. 

22. "Indoors he sometimes used an oak stick like a 
little alpenstock, and this was a sign that he felt giddi- 
ness" (88). 

"He had his chair in the study and in the drawing- 
room raised so as to be much higher than ordinary 
chairs; this was done because sitting on a low or even an 
ordinary chair caused him some discomfort" (89). 

"He became very bald, having only a fringe of dark 
hair behind." 

23. "His face was ruddy in color, and this perhaps 
made people think him less of an invalid than he was. 
He wrote to Dr. Hooker, June 13, 1849: 'Every one tells 
me that I look quite blooming and beautiful, and most 
think I am shamming; but you have never been one of 
those.' " 

"And it must be remembered that at this time he was 
miserably ill, far worse than in later years" (89, 90). 

"His expression showed no signs of the continual dis- 
comfort he suffered. When he was excited with pleasant 
talk his whole manner was wonderfully bright and ani- 
mated, and his face shared to the full in the general ani- 
mation" (90). 

24. * 'Two peculiarities of his indoor dress were that he 
almost always wore a shawl over his shoulders, and that 
he had great loose cloth boots lined with fur which he 
could slip on over his indoor shoes." 

"Like most delicate people he suffered from heat as 
well as from chilliness; it was as if he could not hit the 



128 KNKRGY-DIVKRSION DYSPKPSIA. 

balance between too hot and too cold. Often a mental 
cause would make him too hot, so that he would take off 
his coat if anything went wrong in the course of his 
work" (90). 

25. "He rose early, chiefly because he could not lie 
in bed, and I think he would have liked to get up 
earlier than he did. He took a short turn [walk] before 
breakfast, a habit which began when he went for the first 
time to a water-cure establishment. This habit he kept 
up till almost the end of his life'' (91). 

26. "After breakfasting alone about 7 145, he went to 
work at once, considering the one and one-half hours be- 
tween 8 and 9 : 30 one of his best working times." 

" At 9 : 30 he came into the drawing-room for his letters, 
rejoicing if the post was a light one and being sometimes 
much worried if it was not. He would then hear any 
family letters read aloud as he lay on the sofa." 

"The reading aloud, which also included part of a 
novel, lasted till about 10 : 30, when he went back to work 
till 12 or 12 : 15. By this time he considered his day's 
work over, and would often say, in a satisfied voice, 'Pve 
done a good day's work.' He then went out-of-doors 
whether it was wet or fine" (91). 

27. "My father's midday walk generally began by a 
call at the greenhouse, where he looked at any germi- 
nating seeds or experimental plants which required a cas- 
ual examination, but he hardly ever did any serious ob- 
serving at this time. Then he went on for his constitu- 
tional" (93). 

"In earlier times he took a certain number of turns 
[rounds on a certain walk] every day, and used to count 
them." 

"Of late years I think he did not keep to any fixed 
number of turns, but took as many as he felt strength 
for" (93). 

His walks were "either round the sand walk, 



EVIDENCE FROM CHARLES DARWIN, 1 29 

or outside his own grounds in the immediate 
neighborhood of his own house. The sand walk 
was a narrow strip of land, one and one-half 
acres in extent, with a gravel walk round it" 
(93). It was round this gravel walk that he took 
the turns mentioned. 

28. "The sand walk was our playground as children, 
and here we continually saw my father as he walked 
round. It is curious to think how, with regard to the 
sand walk in connection with my father, my earliest reco- 
lections coincide with my latest; it shows how unvary- 
ing his habits have been" (93). 

Darwin was an example of "regular living.' , 
His life was very much without the important 
element of change. 

29. * 'Sometimes when alone he stood still or walked 
stealthily to observe birds or beasts. It was on one of these 
occasions that some young squirrels ran up his back and 
legs, while their mother barked at them in an agony 
from the tree. He always found birds' nests even up to 
the last years of his life, and we, as children, considered 
that he had a special genius in that direction. In his 
quiet prowls he came across the less common birds." 

" He used to tell us how, when he was creeping noise- 
lessly along in the 'Big Woods/ he came upon a fox 
asleep in the daytime, which was so much astonished 
that it took a good stare at him before it ran 06*." 

"And I remember his collecting grasses, when he 
took a fancy to make out the names of all the common 
kinds" (94). 

All which shows that he did not on these 

outings take complete mental rest. It is men- 

9 



130 KNKRGY-DIVKRSION DYSPEPSIA. 

tally somewhat trying, I should say, to make 
such efforts as are here mentioned, and to 
succeed. 

30. "Within my memory, his only outdoor recreation be- 
sides walking, was riding, which he took to on the recom- 
mendation of Dr. Bence Jones, and we had the luck to 
find for him the easiest and quietest cob in the world, 
named 'Tommy.' He enjoyed these rides extremely, 
and devised a number of short rounds which brought 
him home in time for lunch" (95). 

1 ' I think he used to feel surprised at himself, when he 
remembered how bold a rider he had been, and how 
utterly old age and bad health had taken away his nerve. 
He would say that riding prevented him thinking much 
more effectually than walking — that having to attend to 
the horse gave him occupation sufficient to prevent any 
real hard thinking. And the change of scene which it 
gave him was good for spirits and health. Unluckily, 
Tommy one day fell heavily with him on Keston Common. 
This, and an accident with another horse, upset his 
nerves, and he was advised to give up riding" (96). 

31. " Luncheon at Down came after his midday walk; 
and here I may say a word or two about his meals gen- 
erally. He had a boy-like love of sweets, unluckily for 
himself, since he was constantly forbidden to take them. 
He was not particularly successful in keeping the 'vows', 
as he called them, which he made against eating sweets, 
and never considered them binding unless he made them 
aloud" (96). 

" He drank very little wine, but enjoyed, and was 
revived by, the little he did drink. He had a horror of 
drinking, and constantly warned his boys that anyone 
might be led into drinking too much." 

32. ''After his lunch he read the newspaper, lying on the 
sofa in the drawing-room. I think the paper was the 



EVIDENCE FROM CHARLES DARWIN. 131 

only non-scientific matter which he read to himself (97). 
Everything else — novels, travels, history — was read aloud 
to him. He took so wide an interest in life that there 
was much to occupy him in the newspapers, though he 
laughed at the wordiness of the debates; reading them, 
I think, only in abstract. His interest in politics was 
considerable, but his opinion on these matters was 
formed rather by the way than with any serious amount 
of thought." 

33. "After he had read his paper, came his time for 
writing letters. These, as well as the manuscript of his 
books, were written by him as he sat in a huge horse- 
hair chair by the fire, his paper supported on a broad 
board resting on the arms of the chair. When he had 
many or long letters to write, he would dictate them 
from a rough copy" (97). 

34. "He received many letters from foolish, unscrupu- 
lous people, and all of these received replies. He used 
to say that if he did not answer them, he had it on his 
conscience afterwards, and no doubt it was in great 
measure the courtesy with which he answered every one 
which produced the universal and wide-spread sense of 
his kindness of nature, which was so evident on his 
death." 

"He was considerate to his correspondents in other 
and lesser things, for instance, when dictating a letter to 
a foreigner, he hardly ever failed to say to me, 'You'd 
better try and write well, as it's to a foreigner.' " 

"His anxiety to save came in a great measure from his 
fears that his children would not have health enough to 
earn their own livings, a foreboding w T hich fairly haunted 
him for many years" (99). 

35. ''When letters were finished, about three in the 
afternoon, he rested in his bedroom, lying on the sofa and 
smoking a cigarette, and listening to a novel or other 
book not scientific," 



132 ENERGY-DIVERSION DYSPEPSIA. 

" He only smoked when resting, whereas snuff was a 
stimulant, and was taken during working hours. He 
took snuff for many years of his life, having learnt the 
habit at Edinburgh as a student" (99). 

"The reading aloud often sent him to sleep, and he 
used to regret losing parts of a novel, for my mother 
went steadily on lest the cessation of the sound might 
wake him" (100). 

" He came down at four o'clock to dress for his walk, 
and he was so regular that one might be quite certain it 
was within a few minutes of four when his descending 
steps were heard." 

"From about half past four to half past five he worked; 
then he came to the drawing-room, and was idle till it 
was time (about six) to go up for another rest with novel 
reading and a cigarette" (100). 

36. " Latterly he gave up late dinner, and had a simple 
tea at half past seven (while we had dinner), with an egg 
or a small piece of meat." 

"After dinner he never stayed in the room, and used 
to apologize by saying he was an old woman, who must 
be allowed to leave with the ladies. This was one of 
the many signs and results of his constant weakness and 
ill health. Half an hour more or less conversation would 
make to him the difference of a sleepless night, and of 
the loss perhaps of half the next day's work" (100). 

37. "After dinner he played backgammon with my 
mother, two games being played every night; for many 
years a score of the games which each won was kept, and 
in this score he took the greatest interest. He became ex- 
tremely animated over these games, bitterly lamenting 
his bad luck and exploding with exaggerated mock anger 
at my mother's good fortune." 

' 'After backgammon he read some scientific book to 
himself, either in the drawing-room, or, if much talking 
was going on, in the study." 



EVIDBNCK FROM CHARI^S DARWIN. 1 33 

"In the evening, that is, after he had read as much as 
his strength would allow, and before the reading aloud 
began, he would often lie on the sofa and listen to my 
mother playing the piano" (101). 

38. The scientific reading in the evening "as 
much as his strength would allow" was quite 
enough to account for the night's insomnia. And 
the three other mental occupations of the even- 
ing, backgammon, hearing music, and hearing 
the reading of part of a novel, were also favor- 
able to the insomnia of a man who had been doing 
head work nearly all day. 

"He became much tired in the evenings, especially of 
late years, when he left the drawing-room about ten, 
going to bed at half past ten." 

39. "His nights were generally bad, and he often lay 
awake or sat up in bed for hours, suffering much discom- 
fort. He was troubled at night by the activity of his 
thoughts, and would become exhausted by his mind 
working at some problem which he would willingly have 
dismissed." 

"At night, too, anything which had vexed or troubled 
him in the day would haunt him, and I think it was then 
that he suffered if he had not answered some troublesome 
person's letter" (102). 

40. "The regular readings, which I have mentioned, 
continued for so many years, enabled him to get through 
a great deal of the lighter kinds of literature. He was 
extremely fond of novels, and I remember well the way 
in which he would anticipate the pleasure of having a 
novel read to him, as he lay down, or lighted his cigar- 
ette." 

41. "Much of his scientific reading was in German, 



134 ENERGY-DIVERSION DYSPEPSIA. 

and this was a great labor to him; in reading a book after 
him, I was often struck at seeing, from the pencil marks 
made each day where he left off, how little he could read 
at a time." 

"He used to call German the 'Verdammte.' He was 
especially indignant with Germans, because he was con- 
vinced that they could write simply if they chose, and 
often praised Dr. F. Hildebrand for writing German 
which was as clear as French" (103). 

He had much trouble to learn German, and to 
read it; pronounced it as if English, and, in 
learning, neglected the grammar, sought out 
only the meaning. It was drudgery to read it, 
and therefore at great cost of mental energy (104). 

42. "It was a sure sign that he was not well w r hen he 
was idle at any times other than his regular resting 
hours; for, as long as he remained moderately well, 
there was no break in the regularity of his life. ' ' 

"Week-days and Sundays passed by alike, each with 
their stated intervals of work and rest. It is almost im- 
possible, except for those who watched his daily life, to 
realize how essential to his well-being was the regular 
routine that I have sketched, and with w r hat pain and 
difficulty anything beyond it was attempted." 

43. "Any public appearance, even of the most modest 
kind, was an effort to him. In 1875 he went to the little 
village church for the wedding of his elder daughter, and 
he could hardly bear the fatigue of being present through 
the short service. The same may be said of the few 
other occasions on which he was present at similar cere- 
monies" (105). 

"When, after an interval of many years, he again 
attended a meeting of the Linnean Society, it was felt to 
be and was in fact a serious undertaking; one not to be 



EVIDENCE FROM CHARLES DARWIN. 135 

determined on without much sinking of heart, and hardly 
to be carried into effect without paying a penalty of sub- 
sequent suffering.' ' 

"In the same way a breakfast party at Sir James 
Paget's, with some of the distinguished visitors to the 
Medical Congress (1881), was to him a severe exertion" 
(106). 

44. ' 'The early morning was the only time at which he 
could make any effort of the kind, with comparative 
impunity. Thus it came about that the visits he paid to 
his scientific friends in London were by preference made 
as early as ten in the morning. For the same reason he 
started on his journeys by the earliest possible train, and 
used to arrive at the houses of relatives in London when 
they were beginning their day" (106). 

45. "He kept an accurate journal of the days on which 
he worked and those on which his ill health prevented 
him from working, so that it would be possible to tell 
how many were idle days in a given year. He also 
entered the day on which he started on a holiday and 
that of his return." 

"The most frequent holidays were visits of a week to 
London, either to his brother's or to his daughter's. He 
was generally persuaded by my mother to take these 
short holidays when it became clear, from the frequency 
of 'bad days, ' or from the swimming of his head, that he 
was being overworked. He went unwillingly, and tried 
to drive hard bargains, stipulating, for instance, that he 
should come home in five days instead of six." 

46. "Even if he were leaving home for no more than 
a week, the packing had to be begun early on the previ- 
ous day, and the chief part of it he would do himself" 
(106). 

"The discomfort of a journey, to him was, at least 
latterly, chiefly in the anticipation, and in the miserable 
sinking feeling from which he suffered immediately be- 



136 KNKRGY-DIVKRSION DYSPEPSIA. 

fore the start; even a fairly long journey, such as that to 
Coniston, tired him wonderfully little, considering how 
much an invalid he was; and he certainly enjoyed it in 
an almost boyish way, and to a curious extent." 

47. "Every walk at Coniston was a fresh delight, and he 
was never tired of praising the beauty of the broken, 
hilly country at the head of the lake" (107). 

Every walk at Coniston was a a fresh delight" 
in contrast to the walks for exercise and recrea- 
tion and rest about his own grounds so near 
home; walks that were taken as so much duty to 
be done, and for which he may have regretted 
the time and strength, and which he had often, 
too often and monotonously, repeated. These 
walks at Coniston do not seem to have tired him, 
because he did not enter already tired upon 
them, and because they were a fresh delight — 
change, total change, of circumstances. 

"One of the happy memories of this time (1879) ls tnat 
of a delightful visit to Grassmere. 'The perfect day,' my 
sister writes, 'and my father's vivid enjoyment and flow 
of spirits, form a picture in my mind that I like to think 
of. He could hardly sit still in 1he carriage for turning 
round and getting up to admire the view from each fresh 
point' " (107). 

"Besides these longer holidays, there were shorter vis- 
its to various relatives." 

"He always particularly enjoyed rambling over rough, 
open country." 

48. "He never was quite idle even on these holidays, and 
found things to observe. At Hartfield he watched Dro- 
sera catching insects, etc. ; at Torquay he observed the 



EVIDENCE FROM CHARLES DARWIN. 1 37 

fertilization of an orchid (Spiranthes), and also made out 
the relations of the sexes in thyme" (107). 

49. "My father had the power of giving to these sum- 
mer holidays a charm which was strongly felt by all his 
family. The pressure of his work at home kept him at 
the utmost stretch of his powers of endurance, and when 
released from it, he entered on a holiday with a youthful- 
ness of enjoyment that made his companionship delight- 
ful. We felt that we saw more of him in a week's holi- 
day than in a month at home. ' ' 

50. "Some of these absences from home, however, had 
a depressing effect on him; when he had been previously 
much overworked it seemed as though the absence of the 
customary strain allowed him to fall into a peculiar con- 
dition of miserable health" (108). 

51. "Besides the holidays which I have mentioned, there 
were his visits to water-cure establishments." 

"In 1849, when very ill, suffering from constant sick- 
ness, he was urged by a friend to try the water-cure, and 
at last agreed to go to Dr. Gully's establishment at Mal- 
vern. His letters to Mr. Fox show how much good the 
treatment did him; he seems to have thought that he had 
found a cure for his troubles; but, like all other remedies, 
it had only a transient effect on him. However, he found 
it, at first, so good for him that when he came home he 
built himself a douche-bath, and the butler learnt to be 
his bathman" (108). 

"He paid many visits to Moor Park, Dr. Lane's water- 
cure establishment in Surrey. These visits were pleas- 
ant ones, and he always looked back to them with 
pleasure." 

52. "Dr. Lane said of him: 'He never preached nor 
prosed, but his talk, whether grave or gay (and it was 
each by turns) , was full of life, and salt, racy, bright, ani- 
mated' " (109). 

"He always put his whole mind into answering any of 
his children's questions" (114). 



I38 ^NKRGY-DIVKRSION DYSPEPSIA. 

"As a host my father had a peculiar charm; the pres- 
ence of visitors excited him, and made him appear to 
his best advantage" (115). 

"He used to say of himself that he was not quick 
enough to hold argument with anyone, and I think this 
was true. Unless it was a subject on which he was just 
then at work, he could not get the train of argument into 
working order quickly enough" (117). 

53. "I must say something of his manner of working. 
One characteristic of it was his respect for time; he never 
forgot how precious it was. This was shown, for in- 
stance, in the way in which he tried to curtail his holi- 
days; also, and more clearly, with respect to shorter 
periods. He would often say that saving the minutes was 
the way to get work done. He showed this love of sav- 
ing the minutes in the difference he felt between a quar- 
ter of an hour and ten minutes' work; he never wasted a 
few spare minutes from thinking that it was not worth 
while to set to work." 

"I was often struck by his way of working up to the 
very limit of his strength, so that he suddenly stopped in 
dictating with the words, 'I believe I mustn't do any 
more,' The same eager desire not to lose time was seen 
in his quick movements when at work." 

54. "He could not endure having to repeat an experi- 
ment which ought, if complete care had been taken, to 
have succeeded the first time, and this gave him a contin- 
ual anxiety that the experiment should not be wasted. 
He felt the experiment to be sacred, however slight a one 
it was." 

"He wished to learn as much as possible from an ex- 
periment, so that he did not confine himself to observing 
the single point to which the experiment was directed, 
and his power of seeing a number of other things was 
wonderful" (122). 

"In the literary part of his work he had the same hor- 



EVIDHXCK FROM CHARGES DARWIN. 1 39 

ror of losing time, and the same zeal in what he was do- 
ing at the moment; and this made him careful not to 
be obliged unnecessarily to read anything a second 
time" (122). 

"He allowed no exception to pass unnoticed" (125). 

55. "He enjoyed experimenting much more than the 
work which only entailed reasoning, and when he was 
engaged on one of his books which required argument 
and the marshaling of facts, he felt experimental work 
to be a rest or holiday. Thus, while working upon the 
'Variations of Animals and Plants,' in 1860-61, he made 
out the fertilization of orchids, and thought himself idle 
for giving so much time to them." 

' 'It is interesting to think that so important a piece of 
research should have been undertaken and largely worked 
out as a pastime, in place of more serious work." 

"The letters to Hooker of this period contain expres- 
sions such as, 'God forgive me for being so idle; I am 
quite silily interested in this work' (126,127). He speaks 
in one of his letters of his intention of working at Drosera 
as a rest from the 'Descent of Man' " (127). 

56. Darwin worked seven days a week, and at 
each sitting worked to the utmost limit of his 
strength, and then sought rest in change of men- 
tal work — which was good so far as it broke 
monotony and engaged his mind on something 
fresh, but it was not rest from work. And this 
way of doing explains Darwin's great physical 
weakness, his indigestion. The processes of 
physical maintenance became insufficient be- 
cause his energy was too extensively, too contin- 
uously, and too exclusively appropriated for men- 
tal work of the most exhausting kind. 



I40 ENERGY-DIVERSION DYSPEPSIA, 

Much of Darwin's work was all the more 
exhaustive of energy because it was not easy for 
him. The work of revising and correcting 
proofs he found especially wearisome (130). 
"He did not write with ease. . . . He 
corrected a great deal, and was eager to express 
himself as well as he possibly could. . . . 
On the whole, I think the pains which my father 
took over the literary part of his work was 
very remarkable" (131). 

57. Darwin's ideas may have cost him little 
work. Formulating, preserving and expressing 
them seem to have been more difficult, and we 
have seen that literary composition was hard 
work for him. But I am unwilling to believe 
that such work was naturally difficult for Darwin. 
I would rather say that any work in particular 
must be difficult when one's energies are de- 
voted to too much work in general. 

With an hour of absolute rest after each of 
three meals a day, and no mental work at all 
during the evening, the great Darwin, I fully be- 
lieve, would have had perfect digestion and 
perfect sleep, and would have had, I am sure 
much more mental energy to work with, and his 
work would all have been easy to fdm y and 
absolutely pleasant. And while the quantity of 
his life work was large and the quality un- 
questionable, what might it not have been had 



KVIDKNCB FROM CHARLKS DARWIN. 141 

he understood and attended to the sources of his 
working power, the proper conditions of its 
generation and limitations of its uses! 

58. "If the character of my father's working life is to 
be understood, the conditions of ill health, under which 
he worked, must be constantly borne in mind He bore 
his illness with such uncomplaining patience that even 
his children hardly, I believe, realize the extent of his 
habitual suffering. . . . No one indeed, except my 
mother, knows the full amount of suffering he endured, 
or the full amount of his wonderful patience. For all 
the later years of his life she never left him for a night; 
and her days were so planned that all his resting hours 
might be shared with her. She shielded him from every 
avoidable annoyance, and omitted nothing that might 
save him trouble, or prevent him from becoming over- 
tired, or that might alleviate the many discomforts of his 
ill health" (135). 

' 'But it is, I repeat, a principal feature of his life, that 
for nearly forty years he never knew one day of the 
health of ordinary men, and that thus his life was one 
long struggle against the weariness and strain of sickness. 
And this can not be told without speaking of the one 
condition which enabled him to bear the strain and fight 
out the struggle to the end" (136). 

59. The preceding extracts relative to Charles 
Darwin are taken from the one chapter of his 
autobiography, and from the one chapter of 
"Reminiscences of His Every-day Life." 

Of the extracts which follow, many are from 
the writings of the biographer, but most of them 
are from the letters of Charles Darwin, and will 
be accompanied by the dates of the letters from 



I42 KNKRGY-DIVKRSION DYSPEPSIA. 

which they are taken. These dates will show 
the range of time through which Darwin's ills 
extended. 

The extracts from the letters may to some 
extent repeat the facts embodied in the autobi- 
ography and reminiscences. But I think there 
will be nothing of tiresome monotony in the 
manner in which the few repetitions occur. I 
consider the letters to be the best source of the 
evidence we want. The allusions to Darwin's 
illness were written at or near the times of his 
suffering, and are therefore better than any record 
made from memory. 

It will often happen, also, that the circum- 
stances and conditions under which the letters 
were written, clearly point to errors that were 
quite sufficient to accountfor the illnesses alluded 
to. For example, on page iv of his preface, the 
biographer says: — 

"My father's letters give frequent evidence of having 
been written when he was tired or hurried, and they 
bear the marks of this circumstance." 

60. 1829, July 4. Aged 20 years.— "I started from 
this place about a fortnight ago to take an entomological 
trip with Mr. Hope through all North Wales; and Bar- 
mouth was our first destination. The first two days I 
went on pretty well, taking several good insects, but for 
the rest of that week my lips became suddenly so bad, 
and I myself not very well, that I was unable to leave the 
room, and on the Monday I retreated with grief and 
sorrow back again to Shrewsbury" (154). 



EVIDENCE FROM CHARLES DARWIN. 1 43 

61. 1829, October 16. Aged 20. — ' 'I am afraid you will 
be very angry with me for not having written during the 
music meeting, but really I was worked so hard that I 
had no time." 

' 'It knocked me up most dreadfully, and I will never 
attempt again to do two things the same day" (155). 

62. i8jo y March. Aged 21. — Writing of a college 
examination which he had just passed, he says: "Before 
I went in, and when my nerves were in a shattered and 
weak condition, — " (155). 

63. 1830, November 3. — "I have so little time at pres- 
ent, and am so disgusted by reading, that I have not 
the heart to write to anybody. ... I have not 
spirits or time to do anything- Reading makes me quite 
desperate; the plague of getting up all my subjects is 
next thing to intolerable" (157). 

64. 1831, November 13. — Writing of the excellence of 
the Beagle and her fittings shortly before sailing, he says: 
"In short, everything is well, and I have only now to 
pray for the sickness to moderate its fierceness, and f 
shall do very well" (188). 

65. 1831, December 3. Aged 22. — Writing of the 
prospective start of the Beagle, he says: "I look for- 
ward even to seasickness with something like satisfac- 
tion, anything must be better than this state of anxiety" 

(189). 

66. 1832, July. — "At sea when the weather is calm, I 
work at marine animals with which the whole ocean 
abounds. If there is any sea up I am either sick or 
contrive to read some voyage or travels" (194). 

The biographer says: — 

67. "It has been assumed that his ill health in later 
years was due to his having suffered so much from 
seasickness. This he did not himself believe, but rather 
accredited his bad health to the hereditary fault which 



144 ENERGY-DIVERSION DYSPEPSIA. 

came out as gout in some of the past generations. I am 
not quite clear as to how much he actually suffered from 
seasickness; my impression is distinct that, according to 
his own memory, he was not actually ill after the first 
three weeks, but constantly uncomfortable when the 
vessel pitched at all heavily. But, judging from his 
letters, and from the evidence of some of the officers, it 
would seem that in later years he forgot the extent of 
the discomfort from which he suffered" (197). 

68. 1836 } June 3. From the Cape of Good Hope. — "It 
is a lucky thing for me that the voyage is drawing to a 
close, for I positively suffer more from seasickness now 
than three years ago" (197). 

69. "Admiral Lord Stokes wrote to the Times, April 
25, 1883: "Perhaps no one can better testify to his early 
and most trying labors than myself. We worked to- 
gether for several years at the same table in the poop 
cabin of the Beagle during her celebrated voyage, he 
with his microscope and myself at the charts. It was 
often a very lively end of the little craft, and distressingly 
so to my old friend, who suffered greatly from seasick- 
ness. After perhaps an hour's work he would say to me, 
'Old fellow, I must take the horizontal for it,' that being 
the best relief position from ship motion; a stretch out 
on one side of the table for some time would enable him 
to resume his labors for a while, when he had again to 
lie down. It was distressing to witness this early sacri- 
fice of Mr. Darwin's health, who ever afterwards felt the 
ill effects of the Beagle's voyage" (198). 

70. From Mr. A. B. Usborne, a shipmate. 

1 'He was a dreadful sufferer from seasickness, and at 
times, when I have been officer of the watch, and reduced 
the sails, making the ship more easy, and thus relieving 
him, I have been pronounced by him to be 'a good 
officer,' and he would resume his microscopic observa- 
tions in the poop cabin" (198). 



EVIDENCE FROM CHARGES DARWIN, 1 45 

71. "The amount of work that he got through on the 
Beagle shows that he was habitually in full vigor; he had, 
however, one severe illness in South America, when he 
was received into the house of an Englishman, Mr. . 
Corfield, who tended him with careful kindness. I have 
heard him say that in this illness every secretion of the 
body was affected, and that when he described the 
symptoms to his father, Dr. Darwin could make no guess 
as to the nature of the disease. My father was some- 
times inclined to think that the breaking up of his health 
was to some extent due to this attack" (198). 

Darwin was very glad that he went on this 
voyage of the Beagle (199). 

72. 1832, February 8. — "In the Bay of Biscay there was 
a long and continuous swell, and the misery I endured 
from seasickness is far beyond what I ever guessed at. 
. . . Nobody who has only been at sea for twenty- 
four hours has a right to say that seasickness is even 
uncomfortable. The real misery only begins when 
you are so exhausted that a little exertion makes a feel- 
ing of faintness come on. I found nothing but lying in 
my hammock did me any good" (200). 

73. On the tenth day of the voyage, in the 
harbor of Santa Cruz, Darwin first felt even 
moderately well. 

" I find I am very well, and stand the little heat we 
have had as yet as well as anybody" (203). 

1832, March 7, Bahia. — "I find the climate as yet 
agrees admirably with me" (204). 

1832, May. — "My life, when at sea, is so quiet, that to 
a person who can employ himself, nothing can be 
pleasanter" (208). 

74. 1832, May 18. — "Till arriving at Teneriffe ... I 

IO 



146 ENERGY-DIVERSION DYSPEPSIA. 

was scarcely out of my hammock, and really suffered 
more than you can well imagine from such a cause. 
. . . I find my life on board, when we are on blue 
water, most delightful, so very comfortable and quiet — 
it is almost impossible to be idle, and that for me is say- 
ing a good deal" (209). 

75. 1832, June, — "I am sure you will be glad to hear 
how very well every part (Heaven forefend, except sea- 
sickness) of the expedition has answered. . . . lean 
eat salt beef and musty biscuits for dinner. See what a 
fall man may come to!" (213). 

76. 1832, August 18. — "When I am seasick and misera- 
ble, it is one of my highest consolations to picture the 
future when we again shall be pacing together the woods 
round Cambridge" (216). 

77. 1835, April 23. — After a twenty -two days' excursion 
across the Andes and back to Valparaiso, which was 
very pleasant, interesting and successful, he said: "I 
literally could hardly sleep at nights for thinking over 
my day's work" (231). 

78. 1836, October 6, Shrewsbury. — To Fitz-Roy: "I 
am thoroughly ashamed of myself in what a dead-and- 
half-alive state I spent the last few days on board; my 
only excuse is that certainly I was not quite well" (241). 

79. The period between Mr. Darwin's return from the 
voyage of the Beagle and his settling at Down, 1836- 
1842, "is marked by the gradual appearance of that 
weakness of health which ultimately forced him to leave 
London and take up his abode for the rest of his life in 
a quiet country house." 

In June, i84i, he writes to Lyell: "My father scarcely 
seems to expect that I shall become strong for some 
years; it has been a bitter mortification for me to digest 
the conclusion that the 'race is for the strong', and that 
probably I shall do little more than be content to admir§ 
the strides others make in science" (243). 



EVIDENCE FROM CHARLES DARWIN. 147 

' 'Early in 1840 he wrote to Fitz-Roy: "I have nothing to 
wish for, excepting stronger health to go on with the 
subjects to which I have joyfully determined to devote 
my life." 

80. ' 'These two conditions — personal ill health and a 
passionate love of scientific work for its own sake — de- 
termined thus early in his career the character of his 
whole future life. They impelled him to lead a retired 
life of constant labor 3 carried on to the utmost limits of 
his physical power, a life which signally falsified his 
melancholy prophecy" (243). 

81. "Besides arranging the geological and mineral- 
ogical specimens, he had his 'Journal of Researches' to 
work at, which occupied his evenings at Cambridge. He 
also read a short paper at the Zoological Society, and 
another at the Geological Society" (250). 

On March 6, 1837, "he left Cambridge for 
London," and was settled in lodgings a week 
later; "and except for a short visit to Shrews- 
bury in June, he worked on till September, being 
almost entirely employed on his 'Journal/ He 
found time, however, for two papers at the Geo- 
logical Society" (250). 

82. 1837, March. — "In your last letter you urge me to 
get ready the book. I am now hard at work, and give up 
everything else for it. . . . So that I have plenty of 
work for the next year or two, and till that is finished I 
will have no holidays" (250). 

83. 1837, July. — "I gave myself 4 holiday, ... as 
I had finished my Journal. I shall now be very busy in 
filling up gaps and getting it quite ready for the* press by 
the first of August. I shall always feel respect for every- 
one who has written a book, let it be what it may, for \ 



148 KNKRGY-DIVKRSION DYSPEPSIA. 

had no idea of the trouble which trying to write common 
English could cost one. And, alas, there yet remains 
the worst part of all, correcting the press. As soon as 
ever that is done I must put my shoulder to the wheel 
and commence at the Geology. . . . My life is a 
very busy one at present, and I hope may ever remain 
so; though Heaven knows there are many serious draw- 
backs to such a life, and chief amongst them is the little 
time it allows one for seeing one's natural friends. For 
the last three years, I have been longing and longing to 
live at Shrewsbury, and after all, now in the course of 
several months, I see my dear good people at Shrews- 
bury for a week." 

"Besides the work already mentioned he had much to 
busy him in making arrangements for the publication of 
the Zoology of the voyage of the Beagle" (251). 

84. 1837, April 70. — "I am working at my Journal; it 
gets on slowly, though I am not idle. I thought Cam- 
bridge a bad place for good dinners and other tempta- 
tions, but I find London no better, and I fear it may grow 
worse. I have a capital friend in Lyell, and see a great 
deal of him, which is very advantageous to me in dis- 
cussing much South American geology. I miss a walk in 
the country very much; this London is a vile smoky 
place, where a man loses a great part of the best en- 
joyments in life. But I see no chance of escaping, even 
for a week, from this prison for a long time to come. 
. . . It is just striking twelve o'clock, so I will wish 
you a very good night" (254). 

The lateness of the hour of completing this 
letter of more than seven hundred words, as 
well as the length of it, and of his letters in 
general, is suggestive of overtime work, dys- 
pepsia and insomnia. 



evidence; from charges darwin. 149 

85. i8j/ t May 18. — "Your account of the Gamlingay 
expedition was cruelly tempting, but I can not anyhow 
leave London. I wanted to pay my good dear people at 
Shrewsbury a visit of a few days, but I found I could not 
manage it. ... I have been working very steadily, 
but have only got two-thirds through the Journal part 
alone. I find though I remain daily many hours at 
work, the progress is very slow" (254). 

86. 1837, Autumn. — "I have not been very well of late, 
with an uncomfortable palpitation of the heart, and my 
doctors urge me strongly to knock off all work, and go 
and live in the country for a few weeks." 

''He accordingly took a holiday of about a month at 
Shrewsbury and Maer, and paid Fox a visit in the Isle of 
Wight" (255). 

"It was, I believe, during this visit, at Mr. Wedge- 
wood's house at Maer, that he made his first observations 
on the work done by earthworms, and late in the autumn 
he read a paper on the subject at the Geological Society." 

"During these two months he was also busy preparing 
the scheme of the 'Zoology of the Voyage of the Beagle/ 
and in beginning to put together the geological results 
of his travels" (255). 

This shows that he was far from doing as his 
doctors directed, for they urged him "strongly to 
knock off all work." 

87. 78 j/, October 74. — About the secretaryship of the 
Geological Society. "The subject has haunted me all 
summer! I am unwilling to take the office for the follow- 
ing reasons: ... I have had hopes, by giving up 
society and not wasting an hour, that I should finish my 
Geology in a year and a half. ... I know from 
experience the time required to make abstracts even of 
my own papers for the 'Proceedings. ' If I was secretary, 



150 ENERGY-DIVERSION DYSPEPSIA. 

and had to make double abstracts of each paper, study- 
ing them before reading, and attendance, would at least 
cost me three days (and often more) in the fortnight. 
There are likewise other and accidental and contingent 
losses of time; etc. . . . 

1 'If by merely giving up any amusement, or by work- 
ing harder than I have done, I could save time, I would 
undertake the secretaryship; but I appeal to you whether, 
with my slow manner of writing, and with two works in 
hand, and with the certainty, if I can not complete the 
geological part within a fixed period, that its publication 
must be retarded for a very long time, — whether any 
society whatever has any claim on me for three days' 
disagreeable work every fortnight. . . . Mr. Whewell 
(I know very well), judging from himself, will think I 
exaggerate the time the secretaryship would require; bnt 
I absolutely know the time which with me the simplest 
writing consumes. . • . 

"But I cannot look forward with even tolerable 
comfort to undertaking an office without entering on it 
heart and soul, and that would be impossible with the 
Government work and the Geology in hand. My last 
objection is, that I doubt how far my health w r ill stand 
the confinement of what I have to do, without any 
additional work. I merely repeat, that you may know I 
am not speaking idly, that when I consulted Dr. Clark in 
town, he at first urged me to give up entirely all writing 
and even correcting press for some weeks. Of late any- 
thing which flurries me completely knocks me up after- 
wards, and brings on a violent palpitation of the heart. 
Now the secretaryship would be a periodical source of 
more annoying trouble to me than all the rest of the 
fortnight put together. ... I can neither bear to 
think myself very selfish and sulky, nor can I see the 
possibility of my taking the secretaryship without making 
a sacrifice of all my plans and a good deal of comfort" 
(256-258). 



KVIDKNCK FROM CHARI.KS DARWIN. 151 

"He ultimately accepted the post, and held it for three 
years — from February 16, 1838" (258). 

88. 1837, November 4. — "I am very much better than I 
was during the last month before my Shrewsbury 
visit" (258). 

During very nearly the first six months of 
1838, he took only a three days' rest and visited 
Cambridge and had a good time. "Even this 
short holiday was taken in consequence of fail- 
ing health." 

"My trip of three days to Cambridge has done me such 
wonderful good, and filled my limbs with such elasticity, 
that I must get a little work out of my body before 
another holiday" (259). 

89. 1838, towards the end of June : — "I have not been 
very well of late, which has suddenly determined me to 
leave London earlier than I had anticipated" (260). 

He alludes to London as to him a place "for 
smoke, ill health and hard work." 

"He spent 'eight good days' over the Parallel Roads." 
"His essay on this subject was written out during the 
same summer, and published by the Royal Society." 

He wrote in his pocketbook, September 6. "Finished 
the paper on 'Glen Roy/ one of the most difficult and 
instructive tasks I was ever engaged on" (261). 

It should be noticed that the work of getting 
the data for this paper was done during a vaca- 
tion for rest and recreation which was enforced 
by ill health. This vacation must have lasted 
more than a month. At Shrewsbury he records 
being "very idle," and "opening a note-book 



152 KNKRGY-DIVKRSION DYSPEPSIA. 

connected with metaphysical inquiries. '' "In 
August he records that he read a good deal of 
various amusing books and paid some attention 
to metaphysical subjects" (262). 

90. 1838, August 9. Aged 29. To LyelL — '* My Scotch 
expedition answered brilliantly; my trip in the steam 
packet was absolutely pleasant, and I enjoyed the 
spectacle, wretch that I am, of two ladies, and some 
small children quite seasick, I being well. Moreover, 
on my return from Glasgow to Liverpool, I triumphed 
in a similar manner over some full-grown men." 

He speaks of "most beautiful weather/' "gor- 
geous sunsets," and all nature looking as happy as 
he felt. So he must have felt happy and therefore 
well. It was illness that started him on this out- 
ing; this illness must have been dyspepsia, as 
there is no other illness from which one can so 
quickly and so completely recover by such simple 
change as Darwin made in this case. 

1 'I wandered over the mountains in all directions, and 
examined that most extraordinary district." So he must 
have been physically strong and well. 

91. "I am living very quietly and therefore pleas- 
antly, and am crawling slowly but steadily with my 
work. ... I am coming into your way of only 
working about two hours at a spell; I then go out and do 
my business in the streets, return and set to work again, 
and thus make two separate days out of one. The new 
plan answers capitally; after the second half day is 
finished I go and dine at the Athenaeum" (263, 264). 

This letter to Lyell, of which only about one 



EVIDENCE FROM CHARI.ES DARWIN. 1 53 

thousand, four hundred words are given in 
the biography, was written at night. It shows 
how, with this extra work, he encroached upon 
his sleeping hours, and made overdraughts upon 
his energy, and set his mind agoing at a time of 
night when it was well calculated to keep going 
the greater part of the night. That he could do 
so and be even fairly well and at work, shows 
him to have been mentally and physically more 
powerful than he is supposed to have been at 
this time. 

92. 7838, September 73, lt 'Friday night" To Lyell. — 
"I find so much time is lost in correcting details and 
ascertaining their accuracy. The Government Zoological 
work is a millstone round my neck, and the Glen Roy 
paper has lost me six weeks. ... I have every 
motive to work hard, and will, following your steps, work 
just that degree of hardness to keep well." 

He alludes to ideas occurring; note-taking, 
and theory-growing — to the foundations forming 
themselves of the theories that became the 
achievements of his life (268). 

Of this letter the biographer gives about one 
thousand, one hundred words. It involved 
thought, work, and was written in the evening, 
presumably just before bedtime. 

Mr. Darwin has now twice alluded to some 
advice of Lyell's about working, length of sit- 
tings and how hard not to work. The nature oi 



154 ENERGY-DIVERSION DYSPEPSIA. 

this advice was plainly such as to suggest be- 
yond a doubt that Darwin's methods in these 
respects were faulty, so much so that it seems to 
be conceded by himself that his ill health was 
the consequence of his faulty methods of work- 
ing. This view is also borne out by the advice 
given him by his doctor. 

93. iSjp } October. Married. Aged 30. — "We are liv- 
ing a life of extreme quietness. . . . We have given 
up all parties, for they agree with neither of us; and if 
one is quiet in London there is nothing like its quietness" 
(269). 

"The entries of ill health in the diary increase in 
number during these years, and as a consequence the 
holidays became longer and more frequent." 

In April and May, 1839, he was seventeen 
days on a vacation in the country. In August 
and September, same year, he was off forty days. 

94. August, 1839. Entry:— " During my visit to Maer, 
read a little, was much unwell and scandalously idle. 1 
have derived this much good, that nothing is so intoler- 
able as idleness" (270). 

"At the end of 1839 ms eldest child was born, and it 
was then that he began his observations ultimately pub- 
lished in the 'Expression of the Emotions' " (270). 

"During these years (1839-1841) he worked intermit- 
tently at 'Coral Reefs/ being constantly interrupted by 
ill health. Thus he speaks of 'recommencing' the sub- 
ject in February, 1839, and again in October of the same 
year, and once more in July, 1841" (270). He was also 
busily engaged during this period on other work, geolog- 
ical and ornithological. 



EVIDENCE FROM CHARGES DARWIN. 1 55 

95. 1840, February , morning. Aged ji. To Lyell. — 
"Dr. Holland thinks he has found out what is the matter 
with me, and now hopes he shall be able to get me going 
again. Is it not mortifying ? it is now nine weeks since I 
have done a whole day's work, and not more than four 
half days. But I won't grumble any more, though it is 
hard work to prevent doing so." 

96. 1847, September. — "I have steadily been gaining 
ground, and really believe now I shall some day be quite 
strong. I write daily for a couple of hours on my 'Coral' 
volume, and take a little walk or ride every day. I grow 
very tired in the evenings, and am not able to go out at 
that time, or hardly to receive my nearest relations; but 
my life ceases to be burdensome now that I can do some- 
thing. We are taking steps to leave London, and live 
about twenty miles from it on some railway"' (272). 

97. In May, 1842, the last proof of ''Coral Reefs" was 
corrected. In his diary he writes of it: "I commenced 
this work three years and seven months ago. Out of 
this period about twenty months (besides work during 
Beagle's voyage) has been spent on it, and besides it, I 
have only compiled the Bird part of Zoology; Appendix 
to Journal, paper on Boulders, and corrected papers on 
Glen Roy and earthquakes, reading on species, and rest 
all lost by illness" (272). 

During this year, 1842, he took the little tour by him- 
self in North Wales, "for the sake of observing the effects 
of the old glaciers which formerly filled all the larger 
valleys" (59). 

98. iS/iy September. — He explains "that the weakness 
arising from his bad health prevented him from feeling 
'equal to deep reflection on the deepest subject, etc.;' ' 
and says, "I have to write many letters, and can reflect 
but little on what I write, etc." (275). 

1871, November 16. — In response to a request for con- 
tributions "on religious and moral subjects:" "But I can 



156 ENERGY-DIVERSION DYSPEPSIA. 

not comply with your request for the following reasons: 
. . . My health is very weak; I never pass twenty-four 
hours without many hours of discomfort, when I can do 
nothing whatever. I have thus, also, lost two whole 
consecutive months this season. Owing to this weak- 
ness, and my head being often giddy, I am unable to 
master new subjects requiring much thought, and can 
deal only with old materials. At no time am I a quick 
thinker or writer; whatever I have done in science has 
solely been by long pondering, patience and industry." 
1873, April 2. — "I am sure you will excuse my writing 
at length, when I tell you that I have long been much 
out of health, and am now staying away from my home 
for rest." 

99. On September 14, 1842, Mr. Darwin and 
family settled at Down (287). 

1842, December. — "I hope by going up to town for a 
night every fortnight or three weeks, to keep up my 
communication with scientific men and my own zeal." 

''Visits to London of this kind were kept up 
for several years at the cost of much exertion on 
his part." It was ten miles to the nearest rail- 
way station, and the road was hilly. "In later 
years, all regular scientific intercourse with Lon- 
don became, as before mentioned, an impossi- 
bility" (288). 

Down "is singularly out of the world," and 
Darwin's house stood one-fourth mile from the 
village, on an estate consisting of eighteen acres. 

100. 1848, March 28. — "I am very slowly progressing 
with a volume. ... I manage only a couple of hours 



evidence; from chakxks darwin. 157 

per day and that not very regularly. It is uphill work 
writing books, which cost money in publishing, and which 
are not read even by geologists" (290). 

"I am very much stronger corporeally, but am little 
better in being able to stand mental fatigue, or rather 
excitement, so that I can not dine out or receive visitors, 
except relations, with whom I can pass some time after 
dinner in silence." 

During his first twelve years' residence at 
Down, Mr. Darwin was absent from home a 
total of sixty weeks. "But it must be remem- 
bered that much of the remaining time spent at 
Down was lost through ill health" (299). 

101. 1843, March. — "During the last three months I 
have never once gone up to London without intending to 
call in the hopes of seeing Mrs. Fitz-Roy and yourself; 
but I find, most unfortunately for myself, that the little 
excitement of breaking out of my most quiet routine so 
generally knocks me up, that I am able to do scarcely 
anything when in London, and I have not even been able 
to attend one evening meeting of the Geological Society. 
Otherwise I am very well, as are, thank God, my wife 
and two children. The extreme retirement of this place 
suits us all very well, and we enjoy our country life 
much" (300). 

102. 1844 or 1845. — ' 'We live like clockwork, in what 
most people would consider the dullest possible manner." 

"I have of late been slaving extra hard, to the great 
discomfiture of wretched digestive organs, at 'South 
America,' and, thank all the fates! 1 have done three- 
fourths of it. Writing plain English grows with me more 
and more difficult, and never attainable" (303). 

103. 184.5, July. — "I read only about a dozen pages 
last night (for I was tired with haymaking)." 



I58 KNKRGY-DI VERSION DYSPEPSIA. 

104. 1845, August 7. To LyelL — "I have been wish- 
ing to write to you for a week past, but every five min- 
utes' worth of strength has been expended in getting out 
my second part. . . . Your slave discussion dis- 
turbed me much. ... I will say nothing except that 
it gave me some sleepless, most uncomfortable, hours. 
. . . Sometimes in the beginning of a chapter, in one 
paragraph your course was traced through a half dozen 
places; anyone, as ignorant as myself, if he could be 
found, would prefer such a disturbing paragraph left out' ' 

(309)- 

105. 1845, Octobers. — ''My little ten-day tour made me 
feel wonderfully strong at the time, but the good effects 
did not last" (312). 

106. 7846, September, — "I have been prevented writing 
by being unwell, and having had the Homers here as 
visitors, which, with my abominable press work, has 
fully occupied my time. . . . We go to Southhamp- 
ton, if my courage and stomach do not fail, for the British 
Association" (314). 

107. "Though he became excessively weary of the 
work before the end of the eight years, he had much 
keen enjoyment in the course of if (317). (The eight 
years' work on Cirripedes, October, 1846, to October, 

1854.) 

108. "During part of the time covered by the present 
chapter, my father suffered perhaps more from ill health 
than at any other time of his life. He felt severely the 
depressing influence of these long years of illness: thus 
as early as 1840 he wrote: 'I am grown a dull, old> spirit- 
less dog to what I used to be. One gets stupider as one 
grows older I think.' " 

7845. To Hooker. — "You are very kind in your en- 
quiries about my health; I have nothing to say about it, 
being always much the same, some days better and some 
worse. I believe I have not had one whole day, or 



KVID3NCK FROM CHARXKS DARWIN. 1 59 

rather night, without my stomach having been greatly 
disordered, during the last three years, and most days 
great prostration of strength: thank you for your kind- 
ness; many of my friends, I believe, think me a hypo- 
chondriac" (318). 

109. 184.9, in his diary, — "January 1 to March 10. 
Health very bad, with much sickness and failure of 
power. Worked on all well days." This was written 
just before his first visit "to Dr. Gully's Water-Cure 
Establishment at Malvern." 

no. "In April of the same year he wrote: 'I believe I 
am going on very well, but I am rather weary of my 
present inactive life, and the water-cure has the most 
extraordinary effect in producing indolence and stagna- 
tion of mind; till experiencing it, I could not have be- 
lieved it possible. I now increase in weight, have escaped 
sickness for thirty days,' " 

"He returned in June, after sixteen weeks' absence, 
much improved in health, and, as already described 
(p. 108), continued the water-cure at home for some 
time" (319). 

in. 184.6, October. — "By the way, I have told you noth- 
ing about Southampton. We enjoyed (wife and myself) 
our week beyond measure: the papers were all dull, but 
I met so many friends and made so many new acquaint- 
ances (especially some of the Irish naturalists), and took 
so many pleasant excursions. On Sunday we had so 
pleasant an excursion to Winchester. ... I never 
enjoyed a day more in my life" (319). 

112. 1847, April j. — "I should have written before now, 
had I not been almost continually unwell, and at present 
I am suffering from four boils and swellings, one of which 
hardly allows me the use of my right arm, and has 
stopped all my work, and damped all my spirits. . . . 
Was in bed nearly all Friday and Saturday" (320). 

113. 1847, April 18, Sunday. From a 450-word letter.-— 



l6o ENERGY-DIVERSION DYSPEPSIA. 

"I shall ever hate the name of the Materia Medica, since 
hearing Duncan's lectures at eight o'clock on a winter's 
morning — a whole, cold, breakfastless hour on the prop- 
erties of rhubarb" (323). 

114. 1847 y November. To Hooker.— '-I am very un- 
well, and incapable of doing anything. ... I was 
so unwell all yesterday that I was rejoicing you were 
not here " (329). 

115. 1847. To Hooker. — "I have been bad enough for 
these few last days, having had to think and write too 
much about Glen Roy, . . . Mr. Milne having 
attacked my theory, which made me horribly sick" 

(329)- 

116. 1849, March 28, Malvern. Aged 40. — "But I have 
had a bad winter. On the 13th of November my poor 
dear father died. ... I was at the time so unwell 
that I was unable to travel, which added to my misery. 
Indeed all this winter I have been bad enough, . . . 
and my nervous system began to be affected, so that my 
hands trembled, and head was often swimming. I was 
not able to do anything one day out of three, and was 
altogether too dispirited to write to you, or to do any- 
thing but what I was compelled. I thought I was rapidly 
going the way of all flesh." 

''Having heard, accidentally, of two persons who had 
received much benefit from the water-cure, I got Dr. 
Gully's book, and made further inquiries, and at last 
started here, with wife, children, and all our servants. 
We have taken a house for two months, and have been 
here a fortnight. I am already a little stronger. . . . 
Dr. Gully feels pretty sure he can do me good, which 
most certainly the regular doctors could not. ... I 
feel certain that the water-cure is no quackery" (341). 

117. 1849, June, Malvern. To Lyell. — "I have got 
your book, and have read all the first and a small part 
of the second volume (reading is the hardest work allowed 



EVIDENCE FROM CHARGES DARWIN. l6l 

here), and greatly I have been interested by it. It makes 
me long to be a yankee." 

118. 1849, September 14, Down, To Lyell. — "I go on 
with my aqueous processes, and very slowly but steadily 
gain health and strength. Against all rules, I dined at 
Chevening with Lord Mahon ... I work now every 
day at the Cirripedia for two and a half hours, and so get 
on a little, but very slowly" (345). 

119. 1849, October 12, Down. To Hooker. — ' 'You ask 
about my cold-water cure; I am going on very well, and 
am certainly a little better every month, my nights mend 
much slower than my days. I have built a douche, and 
am to go on through all the winter, frost or no frost. 
My treatment now is lamp five times per week, and 
shallow bath for five minutes afterwards; douche daily 
for five minutes, and dripping sheet daily." 

"The treatment is wonderfully tonic, and I have had 
more better consecutive days this month than on any 
previous ones. ... I am allowed to work now two 
and a half hours daily, and I find it as much as I can do; 
for the cold-water cure, together with three short walks, 
is curiously exhausting; and I am actually forced to go to 
bed at eight o'clock completely tired " (346). 

"I steadily gain in weight, and eat immensely, and am 
never oppressed with my food. I have lost the involun- 
tary twitching of the muscle, and all the fainting feelings, 
etc., black spots before my eyes, etc. Dr. Gully thinks 
he shall quite cure me in six or nine months more" 

(347). 

"The greatest bore, which I find in the water-cure, is 
the having been compelled to give up all reading, except 
the newspapers; for my daily two and a half hours at the 
barnacles is fully as much as I can do of anything which 
occupies the mind; I am consequently terribly behind in 
all scientific books." 

120. "I have of late been at work at mere species de- 

II 



1 62 ENERGY-DIVERSION DYSPEPSIA. 

scribing, which is much more difficult than I expected, 
and has much the same sort of interest as a puzzle has; 
but I confess I often feel wearied with the work, and can- 
not help sometimes asking myself what is the good of 
spending a week or fortnight in ascertaining that certain 
just perceptible differences blend together and constitute 
varieties and not species. As long as I am on anatomy, 
I never feel myself in that disgusting, horrid, cui bono, 
inquiring humor. 

"What miserable work, again, it is searching for prior- 
ity of names. I have just finished two species, which 
possess seven generic, and twenty-four specific names. 
My chief comfort is, that the work must be sometime 
done, and I may as well do it as anyone else" (347). 

121. 78 j 2, March 7. Aged forty-three . — "Very many 
thanks for your most kind and large invitation to Dela- 
mere, but I fear w r e can hardly compass it. I dread 
going anywhere, on account of my stomach so easily 
failing under any excitement. I rarely even now go to 
London; not that I am at all worse, perhaps rather bet- 
ter, and lead a very comfortable life with my three hours 
of daily work, but it is the life of a hermit." 

' ; My nights are always bad, and that stops my becom- 
ing vigorous. You ask about water-cure. I take at 
intervals of two or three months, five or six weeks of 
moderately severe treatment, and always with good 
effect. ... I am now at work on the sessile Cirri- 
pedes, and am wonderfully tired of my job; a man to be 
a systematic naturalist, ought to work at least eight 
hours per day. . . . How paramount the future is to 
the present when one is surrounded by children. My 
dread is hereditary ill health. Even death is better for 
them" (349). 

122. 7852, October 24. — "I do indeed regret that we 
live so far off from each other, and that I am so little 
locomotive. I have been unusually well of late (no 



evidence; from charges darwin. 163 

water-cure), but do not find that I can stand any change 
better than formerly. . . . The other day I went to 
London and back, and the fatigue, though so trifling, 
brought on my bad form of vomiting. . . . I am at 
work at the second volume of the Cirripedia, of which 
creatures I am wonderfully tired. I hate a barnacle as no 
man ever did before, not even a sailor in a slow-sailing 
ship. ... I hope by next summer to have done with 
my tedious work. ... I agree most entirely, what a 
blessed discovery is cloroform. . . . The other day 
I had five grinders (two by the elevator) out at a sitting 
under this wonderful substance, and felt hardly any- 
thing" (352). 

123. 1854, March /. Aged forty -five. One thousand, 
two hu?idred words. — Reading of the country described 
in Hooker's "Himalayan Journal," Darwin said, "One 
can feel that one has seen it (and desperately uncomfort- 
able I felt in going over some of the bridges and steep 
slopes)." 

"I think my stomach has much deadened my former 
pure enthusiasm for science and knowledge" (360). 

124. From J. Hooker's notes. — Concerning Hooker's 
meetings with Darwin: "This began with an invitation 
to breakfast with him at his brother's house in Park 
Street, which was shortly afterwards followed by an in- 
vitation to Down to meet a few brother naturalists. In 
the short intervals of good health that followed the long 
illness which oftentimes rendered life a burden to him, 
between 1844 and 1847, I had many such invitations, and 
delightful they were" (387). 

"A more hospitable and more attractive home under 
every point of view could not be imagined — of society 
there were most often Dr. Falconer, Edward Forbes, 
Professor Bell, and Mr. Waterhouse — there w T ere long 
walks, romps with the children on hands and knees; 
music that haunts me still. Darwin's own hearty man- 



164 KNKRGY-DIVKRSION DYSPEPSIA. 

ner, hollow laugh, and thorough enjoyment of home life 
with friends; strolls with him altogether, and interviews 
with us one by one in his study, to discuss questions in 
any branch of biological or physical knowledge that we 
had followed; and which I at any rate always left with 
the feeling that I had imparted nothing and carried away 
more than I could stagger under." 

"Latterly, as his health became more seriously affected, 
I was for days and weeks the only visitor, bringing 
my work with me and enjoying his society as opportu- 
nity offered. It was an established rule that he every 
day pumped me, as he called it, for half an hour or so in 
his study, when he first brought out a heap of slips with 
questions botanical, geographical, etc., for me to answer, 
and concluded by telling me of the progress he had made 
in his own work, asking my opinion on various points." 

"I saw no more of him till about noon, when I heard 
his mellow ringing voice calling my name under my 
window— this was to join him in his daily forenoon walk 
around the sand-walk. ... A stout staff in his hand; 
away we trudged through the garden, where there was 
always some experiment to visit, and on to the sand- 
walk, around which a fixed number of turns were taken, 
during which our conversation naturally ran on foreign 
lands and seas, old friends, old books, and things far off 
to both mind and eye." 

"In the afternoon there was another such walk, after 
which he again retired till dinner if well enough to join 
the family; if not, he generally managed to appear in the 
drawing-room. . . . He enjoyed the music or con- 
versation of his family" (388). 

125. 1844, July. — "I must leave this letter till to-morrow, 
for I am tired; but I so enjoy writing to you, that I 
must inflict a little more on you" (391). 

126. 1845 1 October 12. — "I have found that even trifling 
observations require, in my case, some leisure and energy, 



EVIDENCE FROM CHARLES DARWIN. 1 65 

both of which ingredients I have had none to spare, as 
writing my Geology thoroughly expends both. . . . 
Looking after my garden and trees, and occasionally a 
very little walk in an idle frame of mind, fills up every 
afternoon in the same manner" (392). 

127. 7^55, June 5. Aged forty-six. — ; 'I have just 
made out my first grass, ... I never expected to 
make out a grass in all my life; so hurrah! It has done 
my stomach surprising good" (419). 

1853, October.— "The only thing we have done for a 
long time was to go to Glasgow; but the fatigue was to 
me more than it was worth." 

From May, 1856, to June, 1858, Mr. Darwin "remained 
for the most part at home, but paid several visits to Dr. 
Lane's Water-Cure Establishment at Moor Park, during 
one of which he made a pilgrimage to the shrine of Gil- 
bert White atSelbourne" (426). 

128. 1856, May j. To LyelL — "I shall be in London 
next week, and I will call on you Thursday morning for 
one hour precisely, so as not to lose much of your time 
and my own; but will you let me this time come as early 
as nine o'clock, for I have much which I must do in the 
morning in my strongest time" (427). 

129. 1856, October, Dow7i, Sunday. To Hooker. — "I 
was very sorry to run away so soon and miss any part of 
my most pleasant evening; and I ran away like a Goth 
and Vandal without wishing Mrs. Hooker good-bye; but 
I was only just in time; as I got on the platform the train 
had arrived. I was particularly glad of our discussion 
after dinner; fighting a battle with you always clears my 
mind wonderfully" (443). 

130. 1857, April, Moor Park. To Hooker.— l 'Your 
letter has been forwarded to me here, where I am under- 
going hydropathy for a fortnight, having been here a 
week, and having already received an amount of good 
which is quite incredible to myself and quite unaccount- 



1 66 ENERGY-DIVKRSION DYSPHASIA. 

able. I can walk and eat like a hearty Christian, and 
even my nights are good. . . • I can not in the least 
understand how hydrotherapy can act as it certainly does 
on me. It dulls one's brain splendidly; I have not 
thought about a single species of any kind since leaving 
home" (449). 

131 May 6, Down. — "I have just corrected the copy, 
and am disappointed in finding how tough and obscure 
it is; but I can not make it clearer, and at present I loathe 
the very sight of it. . . . As usual, hydropathy has 
made a man of me for a short time" (465). 

132. 1857, December 22, Down. — "My health has been 
lately very bad from overwork, and on Tuesday I go for 
a fortnight's hydropathy" (469). 

133. 1858, April 26, Moor Park. To Hooker— ' 'The 
water-cure had done me some good, but I am nothing to 
boast of to-day" (470). 

'7858, April 26. To LyelL — "I have come here for a 
fortnight's hydropathy, as my stomach had got, from 
steady work, into a horrid state." Then follow over 
two hundred and fifty words that involve nothing less 
than profound thought and much enthusiasm. "But I 
will write no more, for my object here is to think about 
nothing, bathe much, walk much, eat much, and read 
much novels" (470). 

134. 1858, April, to Mrs. Darwin. — " Yesterday, after 
writing to you, I strolled a little beyond the glade for an 
hour and a half, and enjoyed myself. ... At last I 
fell fast asleep on the grass, and awoke with a chorus of 
birds singing around me. ... I sat in the drawing- 
room till after eight, and then went and read the Chief 
Justice's summing up, and thought Bernard guilty, and 
then read a bit of my novel. ... I like Miss Craik 
very much, though we have some battles and differ on 
every subject" (471). 

135. 7858, June 25. — "This letter is miserably written, 



EVIDENCE FROM CHAKXKS DARWIN. 1 67 

and I write it now, that I may for a time banish the whole 
subject; and I am worn out with musing" (475). 

136. 7838, July 78, Isle of Wight. To Lyell—' 'We are 
established here for ten days, and then go on to Shanklin, 
which seems more amusing to one, like myself, who can 
not walk" (485). 

1858, July jo, Shanklin. — Some experience with scarlet 
fever seems to have been regarded as a cause of some 
bad behavior of Darwin's stomach, and to this he seems 
to refer in saying: "Nor has my stomach recovered from 
all our troubles. ... I pass my time by doing daily 
a couple of hours of my abstract, and I find it amusing 
and improving work" (488). 

137. 1858, October 6, Down. — <C I am working most 
steadily at my abstract. ... It will yet take me three 
or four months; so slow do I work, though never idle" 

(493). 

7838, October 13, Down. — "I am quite knocked up, and 
am going next Monday to revive under water-cure at 
Moor Park" (495). 

1859, January 25.—''! have found my abstract hard 
enough with my poor health, but now, thank God, I am 
in my last chapter but one" (501). 

1859, March 2, Down. — "Moor Park has done me some 
good" (503). 

138. 1859, March 5, Down. — "I have been so poorly 
the last three days that I sometimes doubt whether I 
shall ever get my little volume done, though so nearly 
completed" (504). 

iSjpy March 75. — "I shall to-morrow finish my last 
chapter. ... I shall now, thank God, begin looking 
over old first chapters for press. But my health is now 
so very poor that even this will take me long" (505). 

I 39- I ^59'> March 24. — ''I can see daylight through my 
work, and am now finally correcting my chapters for the 
press; and I hope in a month or six weeks to have proof- 



1 68 ENERGY-DIVERSION DYSPEPSIA. 

sheets. I am weary of my work. It is a very odd thing 
that I have no sensation that I overwork my brain; but 
facts compel me to conclude that my brain was never 
formed for much thinking' ' (506). 

"We are resolved to go for two or three months, when 
I have finished, to Ilkley, or some such place, to see if I 
can anyhow give my health a good start, for it certainly 
has been wretched of late, and has incapacitated me for 
everything.' ' 

"You do me injustice when you think that I work for 
fame; I value it to a certain extent; but, if I know myself, 
I work from a sort of instinct to try to make out truth. 
. . . We have set up a billiard table, and I find it does 
me a deal of good, and drives the horrid species out of 
my head" (506). 

140. 1859, April 2. Aged fifty. To Hooker. — ' 'There 
will, I believe, be some relations in the house — but I hope 
you will not care for that, as we shall easily get as much 
talking as my imbecile state allows. I shall deeply enjoy 
seeing you. ... I am tired, so no more" (509). 

141. 1839, April 4. — "But (and it is a heavy 'but' to me) 
it will be long before I go to press; I can truly say I am 
never idle; indeed, I work too hard for my much-weak- 
ened health; yet I can do only three hours of work daily, 
and I can not at all see when I shall have finished: I 
have done eleven long chapters, but I have got some 
other very difficult ones: . . . and I have to correct 
and add largely to all those done. . . . Each chapter 
takes me on an average three months, so slow I am." 

"I have just finished a chapter on Instinct, and here I 
found grappling with such a subject as bees' cells, and 
comparing all my notes made during twenty years, took 
up a despairing length of time" (510). 

1839, May 11. — "I fear that my book will not deserve at 
all the pleasant things you say about it; and, good Lord, 
how I do long to have done with it" (513). 



EVIDENCE FROM CHARGES DARWIN. 1 69 

142. 7859, May 18. — "My health has quite failed. I am 
off to-morrow for a week of hydropathy. I am very 
sorry to say that I can not look over any proofs in the 
week, as my object is to drive the subject out of my head. 
I shall return to-morrow week" (513). 

1859, May 29. — "I write one word to say that I shall 
return on Saturday, and if you have any proof-sheets to 
send, I shall be glad to do my best in any criticisms. I 
had • • . great prostration of mind and body, but 
entire rest, and the douche, and 'Adam Bede,' have to- 
gether done me a world of good" (514). 

143. 18 j 9, June 27. — "I am working very hard, but get 
on slowly, for I find that my corrections are terrifically 
heavy, and the work most difficult to me. ... I long 
to finish, for I am nearly worn out" (515). 

144. 1859, August 9. To Wallace; about five hundred 
words. — "But my two chapters on this subject are in 
type, and, though not yet corrected, I am so wearied out 
and weak in health that I am fully resolved not to add 
one word, and merely improve the style. ... I will 
alter nothing. I am worn out, and must have rest" (517). 

145. f8j9, September 7. About four hundred words, to 
Hooker. — "I have corrected all but the last two chapters 
of my book, and hope to have done revises and all in 
about three weeks, and then I (or we all) shall start for 
some months' hydropathy; my health has been very bad, 
and I am becoming as weak as a child, and incapable of 
doing anything whatever, except my three hours' daily 
work at proof-sheets. God knows whether I shall ever 
be good at anything again, perhaps a long rest and hydrop- 
athy may do something." 

' 'I had a terribly long fit of sickness yesterday, which 
makes the world rather extra gloomy to-day, and I have 
an insanely strong wish to finish my accursed book, such 
corrections every 7 page has required as I never saw be- 
fore. It is so weariful, killing the whole afternoon, after 
twelve o'clock doing nothing whatever" (518). 



I70 KNKRGY-DIVKRSION DYSPEPSIA. 

146. 1859, September 11. — "Murray proposes to publish 
the first week in November. Oh, good heavens, the 
relief to my head and body to banish the whole subject 
from my mind" (520). 

7839, September 23. — "I was wishing to hear about 
you, but have been in such an absorbed, slavish over- 
worked state, that I had not heart without compulsion to 
write to anyone or do anything beyond my daily work. 
. . . My health has been as bad as it w T ell could be all 
this summer; but I have kept on my legs only by going 
at short intervals to Moor Park; but I have been better 
lately, and, thank heaven, I have at last as good as done 
my book, having only the index and two or three revises 
to do" (522). 

"On October 3rd I shall start for Ilkley, but shall take 
three days for the journey; ... I go there alone for 
three or four weeks, then return home for a week and go 
to Moor Park for three or four weeks, and then I shall 
get a moderate spell of hydropathy; and I intend, if I 
can keep my resolution, being idle this winter. But I 
fear ennui will be as bad as a bad stomach" (523). 

1859, September 23, To Lyell, more than four hundred 
words. — "I have been so wearied and exhausted of late, 
that I have for months doubted whether I have not been 
throwing away time and labor for nothing" (523). 

147. 1859, September 30. — ' 'I remember well how many 
long years it was before I could look into the faces of 
some of the difficulties and not feel quite abashed. . . 
. I suppose that I am a very slow thinker, for you would 
be surprised at the number of years it took me to see 
clearly what some of the problems were which had to be 
solved. . • . Well, good or bad, my work, thank 
God, is over; and hard work, I can assure you, I have 
had, and much work which has never borne fruit." 

"I was not able to start for Ilkley yesterday, as I was 
too unwell; but I hope to get there on Tuesday or 
Wednesday" (525). 



KVID^NCK FROM CHARTS DARWIN. I7I 

148. 1859, October 75, Ilkley, Yorkshire. To Hooker. 
— "I have been here nearly a fortnight, and it has done 
me very much good. All my family come here on Mon- 
day to stop three or four weeks, and then I shall go back 
to the great establishment, and stay for a fortnight, so 
that if I can keep my spirits, I shall stay eight weeks 
here, and thus give hydropathy a fair chance. Before 
starting here I was in an awful state of stomach, strength, 
temper, and spirits" (525). 

"You can not think how refreshing it is to idle away 
the whole day, and hardly ever think in the least about 
my confounded book which half killed me" (526). 

1859, October 15, Ilkley. To Huxley. — "I am hydrop- 
athising and coming to life again, after having finished 
my accursed book, which would have been easy work to 
anyone else, but half killed me" (526). 

FROM THE SECOND VOLUME. 

149. Mr. Darwin was at Ilkley, a water-cure es- 
tablishment, near Leeds, over sixty days; starting 
there on October 2, 1859, and was home again 
on December 9, following. "During end of 
November and beginning of December, employed 
in correcting for second edition of three thou- 
sand copies; multitude of letters.' 5 The first 
edition of the "Origin of Species," one thousand 
two hundred and fifty copies, "was published on 
November 24, and all copies sold first day" (1). 

It will be noticed from this extract, and a few 
that follow, that Mr. Darwin was doing some 
important work (corrections and correspondence) 
while at Ilkley, and no small amount of it, which 



I72 KNKRGY-DIVERSION DYSPEPSIA. 

will account for the long stay at the water-cure 
at this time doing him very little or no good. 
Within five days of his return home on Decem- 
ber 9, he was again suffering. 

150. 1839, November 12. Aged fifty. — "I am feeling 
very unwell to-day, so no more'' (14). 

J8jp, November 73, Ilkley. — "I have been much out of 
health this summer, and have been hydropathising here 
for the last six weeks with very little good as yet. I shall 
stay here for another fortnight at least. ... I wish 
that my health had allowed me to publish in extenso; if 
ever I got strong enough, I will do so, as the greater part 
is written out, and of which MS. the present volume is 
an abstract. I fear this note will be almost illegible, but 
I am poorly, and can hardly sit up" (16). 

1859, November /j, Ilkley.— "I have not seen one 
naturalist for six or nine months, owing to the state of my 
health, and therefore I really have no news to tell you. I 
am writing this at Ilkley Wells, where I have been with my 
family for the last six weeks, and shall stay for some few 
weeks longer. As yet I have profited very little. God 
knows when I shall have strength for my bigger book." 
(16). 

151. 1859, November 16, Ilkley. — "I like the place very 
much. ... I have had a series of calamities; first, a 
sprained ankle, and then a badly swollen whole leg and 
face, much rash, and a frightful succession of boils— four 
or five at once. I have felt quite ill, and have little faith 
in this 'unique crisis,' as the doctor calls it, doing me 
much good" (17). 

1859, November 18, Ilkley. — "I am feeling very unwell 
to-day, and this note is badly, perhaps hardly intelligibly, 
expressed; but you must excuse me, for I could not let a 
post pass, without thanking you for your note" (18). 



EVIDENCE} FROM CHARGES DARWIN. 1 73 

1859, November, Sunday, Ilkley. — "I have been very 
unfortunate; out of seven weeks I have been confined for 
five to the house. This has been bad for me, as I have 
not been able to help thinking to a foolish extent about 
my book" (20). 

152. 1859, November 21, Ilkley. — "I had hoped to have 
come up for the club to-morrow, but very much doubt 
whether I shall be able. Ilkley seems to have done me 
no essential good. I attended the Bench on Monday, 
and was detained in adjudicating some troublesome cases 
one and a half hours longer than usual, and came home 
utterly knocked up, and can not rally. I am not worth 
an old button" (21). 

1859, November 24, Ilkley. — "This morning I heard 
also from Murray. . . . He wants a new edition 
instantly, and this utterly confounds me. Now, under 
water-cure, with all nervous power directed to the skin, 
I can not possibly do head work, and I must make only 
actually necessary corrections" (29). 

1859, November 26 , Ilkley. — "Farewell, I am tired, for 
I have been going over the sheets" (31). 

153. 1859, December <?, Ilkley. To Lye 11. — "I return 
home on the 7th. ... I will call on you about ten 
o'clock, on Thursday, the 8th, and sit with you, as I have 
so often sat, during your breakfast" (33). 

154. 1859, December 14. — ' 'The latter part of my stay 
at Ilkley did me much good, but I suppose I never shall 
be strong, for the work I have had since I came back has 
knocked me up a little, more than once. I have been 
busy in getting a reprint (with a very few corrections) 
through the press" (37). 

1859, December 21. To Asa Gray, about one hundred 
and thirty-three words. — "I will write again in a few days, 
for I am at present unwell and much pressed with busi- 
ness: to-day's note is merely personal" (39). 

1859, December 22. — "I am too unwell to leave home, 
so I shall not see you" (40). 



174 KNKRGY-DIVKRSION DYSPEPSIA. 

155. i860. — "He was at Down during the whole of this 
year, except for a visit to Dr. Lane's Water-Cure Estab- 
lishment ... in June, and for visits ... at 
Hartfield, in Sussex (July), and to Eastbourne, September 
22 to November 16" (51). 

1860, March j. — "I was notable to go to London till 
Monday, and then I was a fool for going, for, on Tuesday 
night, I had an attack of fever (with a touch of pleurisy), 
which came on like a lion, but went off as a lamb, but 
has shattered me a good bit" (85). 

156. i860) April jo. — "I should have amused myself 
earlier by writing to you, but I have had Hooker and 
Huxley staying here, and they have fully occupied my 
time as a little of anything is a full dose for me" (93). 
In the same letter, referring to an adverse criticism which 
was ' 'extremely malignant, clever, etc.," he says: "It 
made me uncomfortable for one night; but I have got 
quite over it to-day" (94). 

7860 y April 25. — "Hooker . . . stayed here a few 
days, and was very pleasant; but I think he overworks 
himself. ... I have begun to work steadily, but 
very slowly as usual, at details on 'Variation under Do- 
mestication' " (99). 

157. 1860, May 15. To Hooker. — "I do not know what 
to say about Oxford. I should like it much with you, 
but it must depend on health." "His health prevented 
him from going to Oxford for the meeting of the British 
Association" (101). ' 

7860, May 78. — "I am at work at my larger book, which 
I shall publish in a separate volume. But from ill health 
and swarms of letters, I get on very slowly" (103). 

158. 7860 y July 2, Monday night, Sudbrook Park. — "I 
have just received your letter. I have been very poorly, 
with almost continuous bad headache for forty-eight 
hours, and I was low enough, and thinking what a useless 
burden I was to myself and all others, when your letter 



EVIDENCE FROM CHARGES DARWIN. 1 75 

came, and it has so cheered me; ... I am glad I 
was not at Oxford, for I should have been overwhelmed, 
with my health in its present state" (116). 

159. i86o y July jo, Hartfield. — "I have been doing 
nothing, except a little botanical work as amusement" 
(121). On August 11, i860, he writes two letters of about 
one thousand, two hundred words total, involving much 
thought, discussing reviews and criticisms(i24-i26). 

i86o y September 12. About eight hundred words, to 
Lyell. — "I have been of late shamefully idle, u ^., observ- 
ing instead of writing, and how much better fun observ- 
ing is than writing" (133). 

160. 1861, January 73. — "I have not read H. Spencer, 
for I find that I must more and more husband the very 
little strength which I have. I sometimes Suspect I shall 
soon entirely fail. ... As soon as this dreadful 
weather gets a little milder, I must try a little water-cure" 

(152). 

1861, February 4. To Hooker. — "No one can work 
long as you used to do. Be idle; but I am a pretty man 
to preach, for I can not be idle, much as I wish it, and 
am never comfortable except when at work. The word 
holiday is written in a dead language for me, and I much 
grieve at it. ... I have been doing little, except 
finishing the new edition of the 'Origin,' and crawling 
on most slowly with my volume of 'Variation under 
Domestication* " (153). 

161. 186 1 , April.—"! dined with Bell at the Linnean 
Club, and liked my dinner. . . . Dining out is such 
a novelty to me that I enjoyed it" (155). 

186 1, April 12. — "I am {stomacho volente) coming up 
to London on Tuesday to work on cocks and hens, and 
on Wednesday morning, about a quarter before ten, I 
will call on you (unless I hear to the contrary), for I long 
to see you" (157). 

162. 186 1 , Torquay. — "This is quite a charming place, 



176 ENKRGY-DIVKRSION DYSPEPSIA. 

and I have actually walked, I believe, good two miles out 
and back, which is a grand feat" (168). 

163. i86i y December 3. — "I am very busy, but I shall 
be truly glad to render any aid which I can by reading 
your first chapter or two. I do not think I shall be able 
to correct style, for this reason, that after repeated trials 
I find I can not correct my own style till I see the manu- 
script in type. Some are born with a power of good 
writing, like Wallace; others, like myself and Lyell, have 
to labor very hard and slowly at every sentence. . . . 
But style to me is a great difficulty; yet some good judges 
think I have succeeded, and I say this to encourage you. 
... I fear that you will hardly read my vile hand- 
writing, but I can not without killing trouble write 
better. . . . I think too much pains can not be taken 
in making the style transparently clear and throwing 
eloquence to the dogs" (172). 

164. 1862, November 20. — "I have been better lately, 
and working hard, but my health is very indifferent' ' 

(135). 

165. 1863. Aged 34. — His chief employment this year 
was "his book on animals and plants under domestica- 
tion.' ' 

"The work was more than once interrupted by ill 
health, and in September, what proved to be the begin- 
ning of a six months' illness, forced him to leave home 
for the water-cure at Malvern. He returned in October, 
and remained ill and depressed" (186). 

166. 1863, November. To Hooker. — l 'Dr. Brinton has 
been here (recommended by Busk) ; he does not believe 
my brain or heart are primarily affected, but I have been so 
steadily going down hill, I can not help doubting whether 
I can ever crawl a little up hill again. Unless I can, 
enough to work a little, I hope my life will be very 
short, for to lie on a sofa all day and do nothing but 
give trouble to the best and kindest of wives and good 
dear children, is dreadful" (186). 



EVIDENCE FROM CHARGES DARWIN. 1 77 

167. 1863, January 3. To Hooker. — "I am burning 
with indignation and must exhale. ... I could not 
get to sleep till past three last night for indigestion.' ' 

The matter which so strongly roused Mr. Darwin's 
anger, "was a question of literary dishonesty, in which a 
friend was the sufferer, but which in no way affected 
himself" (189). 

From same letter to Hooker. — l 'I have been trying for 
health's sake to be idle, with no success. What I shall 
now have to do, will be to erect a tablet in Down 
Church, 'Sacred to the Memory, etc./ and officially die, 
and then publish books, 'By the late Charles Darwin,' 
for I can not think what has come over me of late; I 
always suffered from the excitement of talking, but now 
it has become ludicrous. I talked lately one and one 
half hours (broken by tea by myself) with my nephew, 
and I was ill half the night. It is a fearful evil for self 
and family" (190). 

168. 1863, March 6. About four hundred words, to 
Lyell. — "I am tired, so no more. I have written so 
briefly that you will have to guess my meaning" (197). 

1863, March 13. — "I should have thanked you sooner, 
. . , but I have been busy, and not a little uncomfort- 
able from frequent uneasy feeling of fullness, slight pain 
and tickling about the heart. But as I have no other 
symptoms of heart complaint I .do not suppose it is 
affected. . . . It is cruel to think of it, but we must 
go to Malvern in the middle of April; it is ruin to me." 

"He went to Hartfield in Sussex, on April 27" (199, 
200). 

1863, May 22. More than seven hundred and fifty 
words, argumentative. — "I have expressed myself mis- 
erably, but am far from well to-day" (209). 

169. 1864. — "'111 all January, February and March.' 
About the middle of April (seven months after the be- 
ginning of the illness in the previous autumn) his health 

12 



178 ENKRGY-DIVKRSION DYSPEPSIA. 

took a turn for the better. As soon as he was able to do 
any work, he began to write his papers on Lythrum, and 
on Climbing Plants." In September "he again set to 
work on 'Animals and Plants' " (211). 

In an "account of there-commencement of the work," 
he wrote: '*• • . I am a complete millionaire in odd 
and curious little facts, and I have been really astounded 
at my own industry whilst reading my chapters on In- 
heritance and Selection. God knows when the book 
will ever be completed, for I find that I am very weak, 
and on my best days cannot do more than one or one 
and a half hours' work. It is a good deal harder than 
writing about my dear climbing plants" (211). 

170. 1864. — "In this year he received the greatest 
honor which a scientific man can receive in this country 
—the Copley Medal of the Royal Society. It was pre- 
sented at the Anniversary Meeting on St. Andrew's 
Day, November 30, the Medalist being usually present 
to receive it, but this the state of my father's health 
prevented" (212). 

171. 1863. — "This was again a time of much ill health, 
but towards the close of the year he began to recover 
under the care of the late Dr. Bence Jones, who dieted 
him severely, and, as he expressed it, 'half starved him 
to death' " (215). 

"He was able to work at 'Animals and Plants' until 
nearly the end of April, and from that time until Decem- 
ber he did practically no work, with the exception of 
looking over the 'Origin of Species' for a second French 
edition" (215). 

He wrote to Hooker: "I am, as it were, reading the 
'Origin' for the first time, for I am correcting for a 
second French edition; and upon my life, my dear fellow, 
it is a very good book, but oh, my gracious! it is tough' 
reading, and I wish it were done" (215). 

172. 1863, January 22. About seven hundred words, to 



EVIDENCE FROM CHARI.ES DARWIN. 1 79 

LyelL — "Many thanks for your offer of sending me the 
'Elements. , I hope to read it all, but unfortunately 
reading makes my head whiz more than anything else. 
I am able most days to work for two or three hours, and 
this makes all the difference in my happiness. . . . 
You gave me excellent advice about the footnotes in my 
Dog chapter, but their alteration gave me infinite 
trouble, and I often wished all the dogs, and I fear some- 
times you yourself, in the nether regions" (218). 

173. 1865, September 27* To Hooker. — "What a won- 
derful deal you read; it is a horrid evil for me that I can 
read hardly anything, for it makes my head almost im- 
mediately begin to sing violently. My good womenkind 
read to me a great deal, but I dare not ask for much 
science, and I am not sure that I could stand it." 

"I confine my reading to a quarter or half hour per 
day in skimming through the back volumes of the Annals 
and Magazine of Natural History ', and find much that 
interests me. I miss my climbing plants very much, as 
I could observe them when very poorly" (224). 

174. 1866 — He was at Down all this year except to 
London twice, a week each time, and about three days 
in Surrey. There seems to have been a gradual mending 
in his health, thus he wrote to Mr. Wallace (January) : 
* 'My health is so far improved that I am able to work 
one or two hours a day" (227). 

Having in a new edition of the "Origin" omitted the 
uses or references to two papers, due to forgetfulness, 
he wrote: "I can not say how all this has vexed me. 
Everything which I have read during the last four years 
I find is quite washy in my mind" (227). 

1866 j July 5. About six hundred and fifty words, to 
Wallace.-— "My health keeps much the same, or rather 
improves, and I am able to work some hours daily." 



l8o ENERGY-DIVERSION DYSPEPSIA. 

175. 186 1 , May ii, and 1 86 j, August 26. — 
He is much puzzled by phyllotaxy, and makes 
some unsuccessful efforts at the study of it, 
with apparent unfavorable effect upon his health 
as a result (235). When Mr. Darwin had made 
a wrong impression he could not sleep till he 
had corrected it or arranged for its correction. 
(236-237). 

176. 1868, February 3. — "I did read 'Pangenesis' the 
other evening, but even this, my beloved child, as I had 
fancied, quite disgusted me. The devil take the whole 
book; and yet now I am at work again as hard as I am 
able. It is really a great evil that from habit I have 
pleasure in hardly anything except natural history, for 
nothing else makes me forget my ever-recurrent uncom- 
fortable sensations" (258). 

177. 1868 ', February 23. — "I have had almost as many 
letters to write of late as you can have, namely, from 
eight to ten per diem, chiefly getting up facts on sexual 
selection, therefore I have felt no inclination to write to 
you" (259). 

1868, May 8. — "But I have been of late overwhelmed 
with letters, which I was forced to answer and so put off 
writing to you" (266). 

178. "He recognized with regret the gradual change 
in his mind that rendered continuous work more and 
more necessary to him as he grew older" (273). 

7868, June 77. — Alluding to his declining appreciation 
of music: "It is a horrid bore to feel as I constantly do, 
that I am a withered leaf for every subject except science. 
It sometimes makes me hate science, though God knows 
I ought to be thankful for such a perennial interest which 
makes me forget for some hours every day my accursed 
stomach" (273). 



EVIDKNCK FROM CHARI^S DARWIN. l8l 

179. His work was interrupted by illness in 
the early summer of 1868, and he spent thirty- 
five days of July and August on the Isle of 
Wight. Further interruption occurred' in the 
autumn (274). 

180. February 23. — "I much regretted that I was un- 
able to call on you, but after Monday I was unable even 
to leave the house. . . . My health is a dreadful 
evil; I failed in half my engagements during this last 
visit to London" (275). 

1869. ' 'At the beginning of the year he was at work in 
preparing the fifth edition of the 'Origin.' This work 
was begun on the day after Christmas, 1868, and was 
continued for 'forty -six days, ' as he notes in his diary, 
/. <?., until February 10th, 1869. He then, February nth, 
returned to Sexual Selection, and continued at this sub- 
ject (excepting for ten days given up to Orchids, and a 
week in London) until June 10th, when he went with his 
family to North Wales, where he remained about seven 
weeks. . . . " (287). 

It should be observed that between December 
26, 1868, and June IO, 1869, Mr, Darwin had, 
excepting a week in London, no holiday what- 
ever, not even a Sunday. 

" My father was ill and somewhat depressed through- 
out this visit, and I think felt saddened by his want of 
strength, and unable to reach the hills over which he had 
once wandered for days together" (287). 

181. 7869, June 22. To Hooker. — ' 'We have been here 
for ten days. ... I have been as yet in a very poor 
way; it seems as soon as the stimulus of mental work 
stops, my whole strength gives way. As yet I have 



182 KNKRGY-DI VERSION DYSPKPSIA. 

hardly crawled half a mile from the house, and then 
have been fearfully fatigued. It is enough to make one 
wish oneself quiet in a comfortable tomb" (288). 

182. i8jo y March 23. — * 'My subject has branched off 
into subbranches, w T hich have cost me infinite time, and 
heaven knows when I shall have all my manuscript 
ready; but I am never idle" (303). 

183. 18 jo, May 25. — "Last Friday we all went to the 
Bull Hotel at Cambridge to see the boys, and for a little 
rest and enjoyment. . . . On Monday I saw Sedg- 
wick. . . . His affection and kindness charmed us 
all. My visit to him was in one way unfortunate; for 
after a long sit he proposed to take me to the museum, 
and I could not refuse, and in consequence he utterly 
prostrated me; so that we left Cambridge next morning, 
and I have not recovered the exhaustion yet. Is it not 
humiliating to be thus killed by a man of eighty-six, 
who evidently never dreamed that he was killing me? 
. . . I tried to get to the two old houses, but it was 
too far for me" (305). 

184. 18 jo, June 30. Aged 63. — "As for myself, I have 
been rather better of late, and if nothing disturbs me I 
can do some hours' work every day" (306). 

185. The "Descent of Man" "occupied him for about 
three years. ' ' 

18 Ji 1 January . — "I finished the last proofs of my book 
a few days ago; the work half-killed me, and I have not 
the most remote idea whether the book is worth publish- 
ing" (311). 

The "Expression of the Emotions" was begun 
two days after the completion of the "Descent 
of Man," showing how little rest Mr. Darwin 
took when work was possible (313). 



EVIDENCE FROM CHARLES DARWIN T83 

186. 1871, July 12. To A, R. Wallace.— "The worst 
of it is, that I can not possibly hunt through all my re- 
ferences for isolated points, it would take me three weeks 
of intolerably hard work. I wish I had your power of 
arguing clearly. At present I feel sick of everything, 
and if I could occupy my time and forget my daily dis- 
comforts, or rather miseries, I would never publish 
another word. But I shall cheer up, I dare say, soon, 
having only just got over a bad attack" (325). 

187. 1871, September 24.. — "You will perhaps be sur- 
prised at my writing at so late a period, but I have had 
the book read aloud to me, and from much ill health of 
late could only stand occasional short reads" (331). 

188. In September, 1872, Mr. Chauncey Wright paid a 
visit at Mr. Darwin's house, of which he wrote: "If you 
can imagine me enthusiastic — absolutely and unquali- 
fiedly so, without a but or criticism, then think of my 
last evening's and this morning's talks with Mr. Darwin. 
. . • I was never so worked up in my life, and I did 
not sleep many hours under the hospitable roof. . . . 
It would be quite impossible to give by way of report any 
idea of these talks before and at and after dinner, at 
breakfast, at leave-taking; and yet I dislike the egotism 
of testifying like other religious enthusiasts, without any 
verification, or hint of similar experience" 344). 

189. 187 2 1 November 1. — "I have had many years of bad 
health and have not been able to visit anywhere; and 
now I feel very old. As long as I pass a perfectly uni- 
form life, I am able to do some daily work in natural 
history, which is still my passion. . . . Excepting 
from my continual ill health, which has excluded me 
from society, my life has been a very happy one; the 
greatest drawback being that several of my children 
have inherited from me feeble health" (352). 

190. 1873 ■, November 19. — "I never in my lifetime re- 
gretted an interruption so much as this new edition of 
the 'Descent' " (354). 



184 ENERGY-DIVERSION DYSPEPSIA. 

1873, December. — "The new edition of the l Descent' 
has turned out an awful job. It took me ten days merely 
to glance over letters and reviews with criticisms and 
new facts. It is a devil of a job" (354). 

1874, April. "I have at last finished, after above three 
months' as hard work as I have ever had in my life, a 
corrected edition of the 'Descent' " (354). 

1875. — He seems to have found the work of correct- 
ing very wearisome, for he wrote: "I have no news 
about myself, as I am merely slaving over the sickening 
work of preparing new editions. I wish I could get a 
touch of poor Lyell's feelings, that it w T as delightful to 
improve a sentence, like a painter improving a picture' 7 

(373). 

191. 187 1. March 22. — "You ask about my opinion 
on vivisection. I quite agree that it is justifiable for real 
investigations on physiology; but not for mere damnable 
and detestable curiosity. It is a subject which makes 
me sick with horror, so I will not say another word 
about it, else I shall not sleep to-night" (378). 

1875, January 4. — On Parliament and proposed vivisec- 
tion laws: "No doubt the names of doctors will have 
great weight with House of Commons; but very many 
practitioners neither know nor care anything about the 
progress of knowledge. . . . I am tired, so no more" 

(381). 

192. 1879. February 4. — "You will perhaps be sur- 
prised how slow I have been, but my head prevents me 
reading except at intervals" (414). 

Concerning a paper published in the Gardeners' Chroni- 
cle ', 1857, p. 725: "It appears that the paper was a piece 
of over-time work. . . . That confounded legumin- 
ous paper was done in the afternoon, and the consequence 
was I had to go to Moor Park for a week" (434). 

193. 1877. — "He may have felt a diminution of his 
powers of reviewing large bodies of facts, such as would 



EVIDENCE FROM CHARLES DARWIN. 1 85 

be needed in the preparation of new editions, but his 
powers of observation were certainly not diminished' ' 
(460). 

194. 1861, November 2i. — il l by no means thought 
that I produced a 'tremendous effect' in the Linnean 
Society, but, by Jove, the Linnean Society produced a 
tremendous effect on me, for I could not get out of bed 
till late next evening, so that I just crawled home. I 
fear I must give up trying to read any paper or speak; 
it is a horrid bore, I can do nothing like other people" 

(473). 

195. 1862, August 9. To A. Gray, over two hundred 
words. — "It is late at night, and I am going to write 
briefly, and of course to beg a favor" (475). 

196. 1878, April 5. — "Hearty thanks for your generous 
and most kind sympathy, which does a man real good, 
when he it as dog-tired as I am at this minute with work- 
ing all day, so good-bye." 

197. 1864, June 10. — "All this work about climbers 
would hurt my conscience, did I think I could do harder 
work." 

"He was much out of health at this time" (488). 

198. i8j2, October 22, Sevenoaks. — "I have worked 
pretty hard for four or five weeks on Drosera, and then 
broke down; so that we took a house near Sevenoaks 
for three weeks (where I now am) to get complete rest. 
I have very little power of working now, and must put 
off the rest of the work on Drosera till next spring, as 
my plants are dying" (495). 

" 'Expression of the Emotions' was finished on August 
22, 1872, and ... he began to work on Drosera on 
the following day" (494). 

"The manuscript of 'Insectivorous Plants' was finished 
in March, 1875. He seems to have been more than 
usually oppressed by the writing of this book, thus he 
wrote to Sir J. D. Hooker in February: 'You ask about 



1 86 KNKRGY-DI VERSION DYSPEPSIA. 

my book, and all that I can say is that I am ready to 
commit suicide; I thought it was decently written, but 
find so much wants rewriting, that it will not be ready to 
go to the printers for two months. ... I begin to 
think that every one who publishes a book is a fool' " 
(500). 

199. 1878, June 2. — "I am working away like a slave at 
radicles (roots) and at movements of true leaves" (503). 

1878, November 21, London. — "We are here for a week 
for a little rest, which I needed" (504). 

200. i8jg y Spring. — "I am overwhelmed with my 
notes, and almost too old to undertake the job which I 
have in hand, /. <?., movements of all kinds. Yet it is 
worse to be idle" (504). 

201. 1880, May 28. — "As for myself I am taking a fort- 
night's rest, after sending a pile of manuscript to the 
printers, and it was a piece of good fortune that your 
book arrived as I was getting into my carriage, for I 
wanted something to read whilst away from home" (506). 

202. /8/p } January 10. — "My scientific work tires me 
more than it used to do, but I have nothing else to do, 
and whether one is worn out a year or two sooner or 
later signifies but little" (526). 

"The subject of health appears more prominently than 
is often necessary in a biography, because it was, un- 
fortunately, so real an element in determining the out- 
ward form of his life" (526). "During the last ten years 
of his life the condition of his health was a cause of satis- 
faction and hope to his family. His condition showed 
signs of amendment in several particulars. He suffered 
less distress and discomfort, and was able to work more 
steadily." 

"Something has been already said of Dr. Bence-Jones' 
treatment, from which my father certainly derived bene- 
fit. In later years he became a patient of Sir Andrew 
Clark, under whose care he improved greatly in general 
health" (526). 



feVIDKNCE^ FROM CHARTS DARWIN. 1 87 

203. 1881^ July. — "We have just returned home from 
Ullswater; the scenery is quite charming, but I can not 
walk, and everything tires me, even seeing scenery. 
. . . What I shall do with my few remaining years of 
life I can hardly tell. . . . Life has become very 
wearisome to me" (527). 

"He was, however, able to do a good deal of work, 
and that of a trying sort, during the autumn of 1S81, but 
towards the end of the year he was clearly in need of 
rest; and during the winter was in a lower condition than 
was usual with him" (527). 

204. 188 1. — "On December 13 he went for a week to 
his daughter's house. . . . During his stay in Lon- 
don he went to call on Mr. Romanes, and was seized 
when on the doorstep with an attack apparently of the 
same kind as those which afterwards became so frequent" 

(527). 

205. 1882. — "During the last week in February and in 
the beginning of March, attacks of pain in the region of 
the heart, with irregularity of the pulse, became frequent, 
coming on indeed every afternoon. A seizure of this 
sort occurred about March 7th, when he was walking 
along a short distance from the house; he got home with 
difficulty, and this was the last time that he was able to 
reach his favorite 'sand walk.' " 

' ' Shortly after this his illness became obviously more 
serious and alarming. . . . He suffered from dis- 
tressing sensations of exhaustion and faintness, and 
seemed to recognize with deep depression the fact that 
his working days were over." 

"He gradually recovered from this condition, and be- 
came more cheerful and hopeful" (528). 

206. 1882, March ^7. To Huxley. — i ' Your most kind 
letter has been a real cordial to me. I have felt better 
to-day than for three weeks, and have felt as yet no pain." 

His preceding illness having been followed by enforced 
rest, he is better at this writing. "No special change 



1 88 KNKRGY-DIVKRSION DYSPEPSIA. 

occurred during the beginning of April, but on Saturday 
the 15th, he was seized with giddiness while sitting at 
dinner in the evening, and fainted in an attempt to reach 
his sofa. On the 17th he was again better, and in my 
temporary absence recorded for me the progress of an 
experiment in which I was engaged." 

" During the night of April 18th, ... he had a 
severe attack and passed into a faint, from which he was 
brought back to consciousness with great difficulty. He 
seemed to recognize the approach of death, and said, 'I 
am not the least afraid to die.' All the next morning he 
suffered from terrible nausea and faintness, and hardly 
rallied before the end came" (529). 

207. "He died at about four o'clock on Wednesday, 
April 19, 1882," at the age of seventy-three years, two 
months and seven days. 

" As for myself, I believe that I have acted rightly in 
steadily following and devoting my life to science. I 
feel no remorse for having committed any great sin, but 
have often and often regretted that I have not done more 
direct good to my fellow creatures" (530). 



EVIDENCE FROM THOMAS CARLYLE. 

Thomas Carlyle was at least fifty-five years a 
keen sufferer from dyspepsia and insomnia. 

The causes of his suffering were never known 
to him. 

Almost wholly from the letters and journals 
of his own writing, as we find them in the four 
volumes of his chosen biographer, Mr. James 
Anthony Froude, I will quote a series of ex- 
tracts which, on my views, will explain the causes 
of Carlyle's sufferings. 

These extracts, like those from Darwin, are 
presented as evidence to prove the truth of the 
views offered in the first section of this essay. 

The evidence from two famous dyspeptics 
makes my case much stronger than the evidence 
from one alone; which is one reason for adding 
to this essay the particulars of the case of 
Carlyle. 

Another reason is that there are important 
points in the history of each case that are not 
common to the other. 

Between Darwin and Carlyle there were great 
differences — as men, as workers, and as sufferers. 

For convenience of reference to their sources, 

(189) 



190 KN^RGY-DIVKRSION DYSPEPSIA. 

these extracts from the Biography of Carlyle 
will be divided into four groups, to correspond 
with the four volumes of Froude from which 
they are taken. Then at the end of an extract, 
in parentheses, will occur the number of the page 
from which it is taken. Page references will 
generally not be repeated, although several ex- 
tracts may come from the same page. The 
points in the case of Carlyle to which the reader's 
attention is particularly directed are about the 
same as those in the case of Darwin (p. 11 9). 

FROM THE FIRST VOLUME. 

1. Thomas Carlyle was of vigorous and pious 
Scotch parents, and was a vigorous lad, in good 
health, when at ten years of age he entered 
grammar school. He entered the University at 
Edinburgh at fourteen, and had a very poor 
opinion both of it and the grammar school. 

At nineteen he "was mainly busy with mathe- 
matics, but he was reading incessantly; " and not 
easy reading it was (19), 

At twenty-one years of age very busy with 
his regular work of tutoring, and with his extra 
work of reading, and also with letter writing; 
works into the nights"(3,7). 

2. From his parents Carlyle could have in- 
herited little, if anything, of the effects of educa- 
tion or mental cultivation. Head work must 



EVIDKNCK FROM THOMAS CARI<YI<E. 191 

have been the more difficult to him for that 
reason. His mother, late in life, learns to write 

(37)- 

3. Carlyle "hated schoolmastering" (39). He 
was not generally in the better society at this 
time; and when in it exceptionally, did not tally 
with it, got on inharmoniously with people in 
general, though he formed some strong excep- 
tional attachments. Aged twenty-oneand twenty- 
two (39). 

At the age of twenty-three teaching school 
becomes intolerable after two years' experience, 
and he collides now and then with the burghers 

(43). 

4. He had saved about nine hundred and one, 
in two years* teaching. Got hams, butter, etc., 
from home, made presents, etc. So that he 
must have been extremely economical (44), 
"He had thrifty, self-denying habits which made 
him content with the barest necessaries" (46). 

He next settles at Edinburgh for purposes of study. 
"Once more the Ecclefechan carrier brought up the 
weekly or monthly supplies of oatmeal, cakes, butter, 
etc." (46). 

5. 18 19, January. Aged 2 j. — Carlyle's health 
is already delicate and the circumstances point 
to dyspepsia (47). There has already been cause 
enough to make Carlyle a dyspeptic, and on 
this matter we shall learn some additional im- 



1 92 ENERGY-DIVERSION DYSPEPSIA. 

portant particulars out of his recollections as he 
wrote them late in life. 

As a divinity student, Carlyle had written a sermon on 
the salutary effects of affliction. "He was beginning 
now, in addition to the problem of living which he had 
to solve, to learn what affliction meant" (47). 

(< He was attacked with dyspepsia, which never wholly 
left him, and in these early years soon assumed its most 
torturing form, like 'a rat gnawing at the pit of his 
stomach. ' His disorder working on his natural irritabil- 
ity found escape in expressions w T hich showed, at any 
rate, that he was attaining a mastery of language. The 
pain made him furious and in such a humor the com- 
monest calamities of life became unbearable horrors" 
(47), 

6. His Edinburgh lodgings seem to have been 
economically small, and with them he was pro- 
vided with "a. daily pittance of a paltry, ill-cooked 
morsel." A kind of half-and-half boarding and 
batching it seems; with his washing and baking 
done at home on the farm. His town bill for 
lodging and subsistence was fifteen shillings and 
twopence, and upwards, per week (47). 

7. Tries to save his money and earn his living 
by tutoring and working on an encyclopedia, un- 
settled as to future, studies without heart, prom- 
ises to take vacation at home, "with a cargo of 
books, Italian, German and others." " You will 
give me yonder little room," he wrote to his 
mother, "and you will waken me every morning 
about five or six o'clock. Then such study. I 



EVIDENCE FROM THOMAS CARI«YIvE. 1 93 

shall delve in the garden, too, and, in a word, be- 
come not only the wisest but strongest man in 
those regions'' (50). 

8. "I was entirely unknown in Edinburgh circles, . 
. . solitary, eating my own heart, fast losing my health 
too, a prey to nameless struggles and miseries, which 
have yet a kind of horror in them to my thoughts, three 
weeks without any kind of sleep from impossibility to be 
free from noise ,, (51). 

9. In November, 18 19, aged twenty-four, 
Carlyle is again in Edinburgh, at law lectures 
and tutoring (58). 

"Reticence about his personal sufferings was at no 
time one of his virtues. Dyspepsia had him by the 
throat. . . • He did not know what was the matter 
with him, and when the fit was severe he drew pictures 
of his condition which frightened everybody belonging 
to him" (62). 

At the age of twenty-five he is still unable to 
settle on any pursuit (78). 

Exercise has a favorable effect on his health. 
More time given to exercise means less time 
given to head work, both of which serve as 
causes of better health. He speaks also of out- 
door air as if he did not provide himself with 
good air indoors (78). 

10. "With stupidity and sound digestion man 
may front much, ,, said Carlyle (82), but what of 
the stupidity of a man who will study anything 
else but his stomach, and who with his working 

13 



194 KNKRGY-DIVKRSION DYSPEPSIA, 

time encroaches heavily upon his digesting time 
and his sleeping time, and then never under- 
stands why he suffers? 

1 ' Our works, . . . are the mirror wherein the spirit 
first sees its natural lineaments. Hence, too, the folly 
of that impossible precept, Know thyself ] till it be trans- 
lated into this partially possible one, Know what thou 
canst work at" (84). Had he only known his physical 
self, and understood his bodily functions — of digestion, 
the circumstances and conditions thereof, that work re- 
quires force, that the body can not supply it, but, 
machine-like, can only transform it! 

11. "But for me, so strangely unprosperous had I been, 
the net result of my workings amounted as yet simply to 
nothing' ' (84), at the age of twenty -six years. 

"He had read every book in Irving's library at 
Kirkcaldy, and his memory had the tenacity of steel. 
He had studied Italian and Spanish. He had worked 
at D'Alembert and Diderot, Rousseau and Voltaire. 
Still unsatisfied, he had now fastened himself on Ger- 
man, and was devouring Schiller and Goethe" (105). 

"On finishing his first perusal of Goethe's 'Wilhelm 
Meister, '"he walked out at midnight into the streets of 
Edinburgh to think about it (107). 

12. 1822, March. He confesses ill health, 
nervous disorders, indecision as to extra work, 
inability to work, etc. (120). 

He says he translated the "Book Fifth" ("Com- 
plete Doctrine of Proportions'") of Legendre 
(French to English), making a complete job of 
it within a Sunday forenoon (130). 

13. 1822, November 14. — Carlyle was at this time serv-. 
ing as private tutor to the Bullers. * 'The young Bullerg 



KVIDKNCK FROM THOMAS CAKXYI^. 195 

are gone to college a few days ago, and I do not go near 
them till two o'clock in the afternoon. By this means I 
not only secure a competent space of time for my own 
studies, but find also that my stomach troubles me a 
good deal less after breakfast than it used to do when I 
had a long hurried walk to take before it. My duties are 
of an easy and brief sort. I dine at half past three. 
. . . and have generally done with the whole against 
six." 

"I find Jack (his brother) immersed in study when I 
return. He cooks the tea for us, and we afterwards 
devote ourselves to business till between eleven and 
twelve" (137). 

1822, December 4, To his Mother. — "It is already 
past twelve o'clock, and I am tired and sleepy, but I 
can not go to rest without answering" — and writes a 
letter of two hundred and eighty-eight words after mid- 
night (137). 

14. 1823, Early. Aged 27. — "I write nonsense all the 
morning, then go and teach from two till six, then come 
home and read till half-past eleven, and so the day is 
done. I am happy while I can keep myself busy, which, 
alas! is not by any means always" (141). 

1823, Early. — "While I, in spite of all my dyspepsias 
and nervousness and hypochondrias, am still bent on 
being a very meritorious sort of character, etc." (143). 

15. 1823, Spring-. — The Bullers move, and Carlyle has 
a week's holiday, which he spends at home, joining the 
Bullers at their new location at the end of May. "Car- 
lyle had been complaining of his health again. He had 
been working hard on Schiller, and was beginning his 
translation of 'Meister' " (144). "When dyspepsia was 
upon him he spared no one, least of all those who were 
nearest and dearest to him" (147). 

1823, June 10. Kinnaird House {Bullers^, — "My 
health was scarcely so good as you saw it for some days 



I96 ENERGY-DIVERSION DYSPEPSIA. 

after I arrived . The air is pure as may be, and I am 
quiet as when at home; but I did not sleep well for some 
nights, and began to fear that I was again going down 
hill. On considering what the matter might be, it struck 
me it was, perhaps, my dinning so late, at five o'clock, 
and fasting so long before dinner. . . . And now 
. . . my meals are served up in a very comfortable 
manner at the hours I myself selected." 

16. "The boys and I are up at breakfast a little before 
nine. We begin work half an hour after it, continuing 
till one. Then I go out and walk, or smoke, or amuse 
myself till half past two, when dinner is waiting for me 
in the parlor, after which teaching recommences till near 
five, and then I am free as air for the night." (149). 

He has tea by himself at seven o'clock. Is translating 
German. Has a fire every night, and all things he wants 
are supplied to him abundantly. "lam busy, I shall be 
healthy, and in the meantime I am as comfortable as I 
could hope to be" (149). 

"The Bullers, as he admitted, were most kind and 
considerate; yet he must have tried their patience. 
. . . He was uneasy, restless, with dyspepsia and in- 
tellectual fever. He laid the blame on his position, and 
was already meditating to throw up his engagement" 
(153). 

17. Carlyle was receiving ,£200 a year from 
the Bullers, and was doing literature for about 
£100 more. It is only when Carlyle works at 
hard brain drudgery, and makes long and late 
hours, that we note complaints of ill health, of 
dyspepsia and insomnia. He does not complain, 
and allows the inference that he is well when 
work is let alone, as on journeys, visits, and such 



EVIDENCE FROM THOMAS CARI/¥XE. 1 97 

expeditions as that one to Paris, with its twelve 
days' sightseeing, during which he was very 
busy but not at hard, monotonousbrain drudgery. 

18. 1823, September 2. — "I sleep irregularly here, and 
feel a little, very little, more than my usual share of 
torture every day. What the cause is would puzzle me 
to explain within the limits I could here assign it. I 
take exercise sufficient daily; I attend with vigorous 
minuteness to the quality of my food; I take all the pre- 
cautions that I can, yet still the disease abates not" 
(154). 

19. 182J. Aged 28. — "If Carlyle complained," says his 
biographer, "his complaints were the impatience of a man 
who was working with all his might. If his dyspepsia 
did him no serious harm, it obstructed his efforts and 
made him miserable with pain. He had written the first 
part of Schiller. . . . He was translating 'Meister,' 
and his translation, though the production of a man who 
had taught himself with grammar and dictionary, and 
had never spoken a word of German, is yet one of the 
very best which has ever been made from one language 
into another. In everything which he undertook he 
never spared labor or slurred over a difficulty, but en- 
deavored with all his might to do his work faithfully" 

(157). 

20. 782J, November. — Referring to the six months just 
elapsed, he writes "of agonized days and nights, and the 
acquisition of a state of health worse than ever it was" 

(159). 

"There is something in reading a weak or dull book 
very nauseous to me. Reading is a weariness of the 
flesh. After reading and studying about two score of 
good books there is no new thing whatever to be met 
with in the generality of libraries" (160). 



tgS KNKRGY-DIVKRSION DYSPKPSIA. 

1823, December 14. — "I spent ten days wretchedly in 
Edinburgh and Haddington. I was consulting doctors, 
who made me give up my dear nicotium and take to 
mercury." 

21. December 31. — "The year is closing. 
What have I done to mark the course of it? Suffered 
the pangs of Tophet almost daily; grown sicker and 
sicker; alienated by my misery certain of my friends, and 
worn out from my own mind a few remaining capabili- 
ties of enjoyment." 

"My curse seems deeper and blacker than that of 
any man: to be immured in a rotten carcase, every avenue 
of which is changed into an inlet of pain, till my intellect 
is obscured and weakened, and my head and heart are 
alike desolate and dark. How have I deserved this?" 
(161). 

"I want health, health, health! On this subject I am 
becoming quite furious; my torments are greater than I 
am able to bear. If I do not soon recover, I am misera- 
ble for ever and ever." 

"They talk of the benefit of ill health in a moral 
point of view. I declare solemnly, without exaggera- 
tion, that I impute nine-tenths of my present wretched- 
ness, and rather more than nine-tenths of all my faults, 
to this infernal disorder in the stomach" (161). 

" Schiller, Part III., 1 began just three nights ago. I 
absolutely could not sooner. These days leave me 
scarcely the consciousness of existence. I am scribbling, 
not writing, Schiller. My mind will not catch hold of 
it. . . . It is not in my natural vein. I wrote a very 
little of it to-night, and then went and talked ineptitudes 
at the house." 

" Alas! there is mercurial powder in me, and a gnaw- 
ing pain over all the organs of digestion, especially in 
the pit and left side of the stomach. Let this excuse the 
wild absurdity above." 



KVIDKNCK FROM THOMAS CARI^YI^K. 1 99 

The above referred to, consists of over seven 
hundred words of journal entries, written up to 
half past eleven, and nearly one hundred words 
more were added the same night, including 
eight lines of verse (162). 

22. 1824, January 7. — " I am very weak. . . . Cer- 
tainly no one ever wrote with such tremendous difficulty 
as I do. Shall I ever learn to write with ease?" (162). 

" There can be no doubt/' says Froude, "that Carlyle 
suffered, and perhaps suffered excessively. It is equally 
certain that his sufferings were immensely aggravated by 
the treatment to which he was submitted." " 'A long 
hairy-eared jackass,' as he called some Edinburgh 
physician, had ordered him to give up tobacco, but he 
had ordered him to take mercury as well; and he told me 
that along with the mercury he must have swallowed 
whole hogsheads of castor oil" (162). 

" Carlyle was the least patient with the common woes 
of humanity. Nature had in fact given him a constitu- 
tion of unusual strength. . . . He distracted every 
one with whom he came in contact" (163). 

Carlyle gets on very well at his father's home 
and farm, and seems to be well. Translates a 
certain amount daily and finds it easy. Takes 
rides and other exercise. But even in such 
well-doing, he runs into monotony, gets sick 
and needs change (172). 

1824. Aged 2g. — "He had read enormously — history, 
poetry, philosophy; the whole range of modern literature 
— French, German, English" (174). 

23. 182^ July 6. — Mr. Badams, a physician 



200 ENKRGY-DIVKRSION DYSPEPSIA. 

by education, chemical manufacturer by occupa- 
tion, who had suffered four years of the torments 
of dyspepsia in person, and had recovered and 
become famous in the cure of dyspepsia, pro- 
poses that Carlyle go home with him to Bir- 
mingham and live a month with him, that he 
might find out the make of Carlyle and pre- 
scribe for his unfortunate inner man (185). 

"Of his skill in medicine I argue favorably from his 
general talent; and from the utter contempt in which he 
holds all sorts of drugs as applied to persons in my 
situation. Regimen and exercise are his specifics, 
assisted by as little gentlest medicine as possible; on the 
whole I never had such a chance for the recovery of my 
health' ' (from a letter of one thousand, three hundred 
and thirty words, 185). 

1 'Eight weeks were passed with Badams without, how- 
ever, the advantage to Carlyle' s health which he had 
looked for" (189). 

Badams did use drugs, considerably. Carlyle 
took his drugs, his exercise, rides, walks, talks 
and all that was prescribed, and enjoyed the 
visit, but the relation of head work to digestion 
was, as usual, overlooked. Carlyle took his 
books with him and his correspondence, and he 
worked about as usual. Consequently Badams' 
failure. 

24. 1824, September 18. — He does much talking with 
Badams (189). "With regard to health, it often seems to 
me that I am better than I have been for several years, 
though scarcely a week passes without a relapse for 



EVIDKNCK FROM THOMAS CARI.YI.K. 201 

awhile into directly the opposite opinion. The truth is, 
it stands thus: I have been bephysicked and bedrugged. 
I have swallowed say about two stoupfuls of castor oil 
since I came hither: unless I dose myself with that oil of 
sorrow every fourth day, I can not get along at all" 
(190). 

"His tastes were of the simplest. The plainest house, 
the plainest food, the plainest dress, was all that he 
wanted" (210). 

He put a large share of his mental energy 
into letter-writing. And I notice, for example, 
two letters, each containing about one thousand, 
six hundred and eighty words (231). 

25. 1825, January 30. Aged 30. — Carlyle refers to 
himself "as a man who has spent seven long years in 
incessant torture, till his heart and head are alike 
blasted.' ' "I must not and can not continue this sort of 
life; my patience with it is utterly gone: it were better 
for me on the soberest calculation to be dead than to 
continue it much longer" (230). 

He acknowledges the advantages of out-door 
exercises, but they do not cure him, nor keep 
him even temporarily well (240). 

1825, January 22. — "Could I live without taking drugs 
for three months, I should even now be perfectly well. 
But drenching oneself with castor oil and other abomi- 
nations, how can one be otherwise than weak and feck- 
less?" 

1 'Often of late I have even begun to look upon my 
long dismal seven years of pain as a sort of blessing in 
disguise" (240). 

26. 1825 > June. — "I am gradually and steadily gather- 



1b2 ENERGY-DIVERSION DYSPEPSIA. 

ing health, and for my occupations they amount to zero. 
It is many a weary year since I have been so idle and so 
happy. I read Richter and Jacobi; I ride and hoe cab- 
bages" (246). This shows that he can be well. 

During fourteen months ending in May, 1826, Carlyle 
was tenant of a farm which was worked for him mainly 
by a brother. "Here I established myself," he wrote, 
"set up my books and bits of implements, and took to 
doing German romance as my daily work — ten pages 
daily my stint, which I faithfully accomplished. . . . 
I lived very silent, diligent, had long solitary rides on my 
wild Irish horse Larry, good for the dietetic part" (245). 

His translation of ten pages daily was done in 
the forenoons, and there is no record of his do- 
ing any hard continuous head work besides. 
Neither is there any intimation of dyspepsia nor 
of insomnia during this year on the farm at 
Hoddam Hill. 

27. "Late in September, 1826, Carlyle was again 
splenetic, sick, sleepless, void of faith, hope, and charity 
— in short, altogether bad and worthless" (293). 

Carlyle was married on October 17, 1826, and 
the same day settled at Comely Bank, Edin- 
burgh. 

A few days after he was married, he wrote to his 
mother: "I was very sullen yesterday, sick with sleep- 
lessness, nervous, bilious, splenetic, and all the rest of 
it" (301). 

About the same time he wrote to his brother: "I am 
bilious. I have to swallow salts and oil; the physic 
leaves me pensive yet quiet in heart, and on the whole 



EVIDENCE FROM THOMAS CARI<YI<E. 203 

happy enough; but the next day comes a burning stom- 
ach and a heart full of bitterness and gloom" (302). 

28. "As he grew more composed ... he threw 
himself into a course of wide and miscellaneous reading' ' 

302). 

1827, February 3. — "111 health is not harder on us than 
usual. . . . It is strange, too, how one gets habitu- 
ated to sickness. I bear my pain as Christian did his 
pack in the 'Pilgrim's Progress.' " 

From the same letter we learn that Carlyle 
goes to work directly after breakfast, and till one 
or two o'clock, then he goes out to the city or 
seashore, returning for his mutton-chop at four. 
"After dinner we all read learned languages till 
coffee (which we now often take at night instead 
of tea), and so on till bedtime." He mentions 
porridge at ten o'clock at night (310). 

"We give no dinners and take none, and by the bless- 
ing of heaven design to persist in this course so long as 
we shall see it to be best" (311). 

Two weeks later Mrs. Carlyle wrote of him, 
"Oh, that he were indeed well!" (312). 

"It is my husband's worst fault to me that I will not or 
can not speak. Often when he has talked for an hour 
without answer, he will beg for some signs of life on my 
part, and the only sign I can give is a little kiss" (313). 

29. His biographer writes: "It was not easy to answer 
Carlyle. Already it seems his power of speech, un- 
equaled so far as my experience goes by that of any 
other man, had begun to open itself. 'Carlyle first, and 
all the rest nowhere,' was the description of him by one 



204 KNKRGY-DIVKRSION DYSPEPSIA. 

of the best judges in London, when speaking of the great 
talkers of the day. His vast reading, his minute obser- 
vation, his miraculously retentive memory, gave him 
something valuable to say on every subject which could 
be raised. . . . His writing, too, was as fluent as his 
speech. . . . Words flowed from him with a com- 
pleteness of form which no effort could improve. When 
he was excited it was like the eruption of a volcano, 
thunder and lightning, hot stones and smoke and ashes" 
(3i3). 

30. Carlyle's talk must have been at the expense 
of an amount of mental energy that was propor- 
tional to the quality of the talk, and so also with 
his writing. It will yet often be observed from 
these extracts that his excessive expenditure of 
energy, with tongue or pen, left him far too little 
for purposes of digestion. Particularly did he 
suffer for his talking during and just after 
meals. 

31. I will quote here also some points from Charles Dar- 
win's recollections of Carlyle: "The last man whom I 
will mention is Carlyle, seen by me several times at my 
brother's house, and two or three times at my own house. 
. . . No one can doubt about his extraordinary power 
of drawing pictures of things and men — far more vivid, as 
it appears to me, than any drawn by Macaulay. Whether 
his pictures of men were true ones is another question. 
. . . His talk was very racy and interesting, just like 
his writings, but he sometimes went on too long on 
the same subject. . . . I remember a funny dinner at 
my brother's where, amongst a few others, were Babbage 
and Lyell, both of whom liked to talk. Carlyle, how- 



EVIDENCE FROM THOMAS CARI^YI^. 205 

ever, silenced everyone by haranguing during the whole 
dinner on the advantages of srlence. After dinner Bab- 
bage, in his grimmest manner, thanked Carlyle for his 
very interesting lecture on silence. . . . His mind 
seemed to be a very narrow one; even if all branches of 
science, which he despised, are excluded." — Life and Let- 
ters of Charles Darwin, vol. z, p. 63. 

32. Following is Carlyle's own account of that 
same "funny dinner" : — 

1840, November 26. — "Last night, greatly against wont, 
I went out to dine with Rogers, Milman, Babbage, Pick- 
wick, Lyell the geologist, etc., with sundry indifferent- 
favored women. A dull evening, not worth awaking for 
at four in the morning, with the dance of all the devils 
round you. Babbage continues eminently unpleasant to 
me, with his frog mouth and viper eyes, with his hide- 
bound, wooden irony, and the acridest egotism looking 
through it" (p. 17 1, vol. 3). 

FROM THE SECOND VOLUME. 

33. In May, 1828, the Carlyles settled on the 
farm of Craigenputtock (19). 

7826, June jo. Aged 33. Having already written 
five hundred and sixty words, to his brother, he con- 
cludes: "But I am getting very sick, and must leave you 
till after dinner" (21). 

On the same page he says his health is better 
ever since he came to the farm. 

"Carlyle could not eat such bread as the Craigenput- 
tock servants could bake for him, or as could be bought 
at Dumfries, and Mrs. Carlyle had to make it herself" 

(24). 



206 ENERGY-DIVERSION DYSPEPSIA. 

Mrs. Carlyle wrote: "No capable servant choosing to 
live at such an out-of-the-way place, and my husband 
having bad digestion, which complicated my difficulties 
dreadfully. The bread, above all, brought from Dumfries, 
soured on his stomach" (25). 

"The pastoral simplicities of the moorland had not 
cured Carlyle of his humors and hypochondrias. He had 
expected that change of scene would enable him to fling 
off his shadow. His shadow remained sticking to him; 
and the poor place where he had cast his lot had as usual 
to bear the blame of his disappointment" (26). 

"Fresh milk was the most essential article of Carlyle' s 
diet" (38). 

34. 7828, November 26. — "I write hard all day, and 
then Jane and I, both learning Spanish for the last month, 
read a chapter of 'Don Quixote' between dinner and tea. 
. . , After tea I sometimes write again, being dread- 
fully slow at the business. . . . And when I am not 
writing I am reading" (39). 

' 'Thinking on these momentous subjects" — French 
politics of the time — "Carlyle took his nightly walks on 
the frozen moor" (44). 

"Carlyle himself w r rote and rode and planted pota- 
toes" (48). 

"When an article was finished, Carlyle allowed him- 
self a fortnight's holiday" (49). 

35. 78 jo, January 74. Aged 35. — From Carlyle' s 
journal: "Does it seem hard to thee that thou shouldst 
toil in dullness, sickness, and isolation" (64). 

"Last night I sat up very late reading Scott's 'History 
of Scotland'" (70). 

"Carlyle is over head and ears in business to-night, 
writing letters to all the four winds" (82). 

36. 7837, July 7, on The Farm. "I now see through 
Teufel, write at him literally night and day, yet can not 
be done within — say fifteen days. Then I should like to 



EVIDKNCK FROM THOMAS CAKXYI^K. 207 

have a week's rest, for I am somewhat in the inflammatory 
vein." 

Anticipating a visit to London: "I care about nothing 
but a bed where I can sleep; where are no bugs and no 
noises about midnight; for I am pretty invincible when 
once fairly sealed. The horrors of nerves are somewhat 
laid in me, I think; yet the memory of them is frightfully 
vivid' ' (126). 

37. 1831, July 12, The Farm. — "1 am struggling for- 
ward with Dreck, sick enough but not in bad heart" 
(128). 

1831, July 17 , The Farm. — "I am laboring at Teufel 
with considerable impetuosity" (128). 

1837, August 71, London. — After a vicissitudinous trip 
to London: ''However, I have now had sleep and am 
well" (135). 

18 3 1 , September 11, London. Aged 36. — After being 
just a month in London he acknowledges being "bilious, 
never so nervous, impoverished, bug-bitten, and bedev- 
iled" (162). 

38. 1831, October 20, London. — "I, too, am fully bet- 
ter. . . . No noises, no bugs disturb us through the 
night. . . . More than once we have slept almost ten 
hours at a stretch — a noble spell of sleeping, of which^ 
however, both of us, so long disturbed and tossed about, 
had need enough." 

1831, November io> London. — "Both of us sleep well; 
our health is fully of the old quality" (176). 

1832, Ja?iuary 21 y London. — "I am sickly, not dispir- 
ited, yet sad as is my wont. When did I laugh last? 
Alas! 'light laughter like heavy money has altogether 
fled from us' " (188). 

39. 1831, December 13 \ London. — "My health is not 
worse than it was wont to be. . . . Towards two 
o'clock I am about laying down my pen, to walk till as 
near dinner (at four) as I like; then comes usually resting 



208 ENKRGY-DIVKRSION DYSPEPSIA. 

stretched on a sofa, with such small talk as may be going 
till tea; after which, unless some interloper drop in (as 
happens fully oftener than not), I again open my desk 
and work till bedtime— about eleven. I have had a 
tough struggle indeed with this paper, but my hand is 
now in again and I am doing better" (195). 

After a seven months' stay in London, the 
Carlyles left on March 25, 1832, returning to the 
farm (214). 

40. "Carlyle, intensely occupied with his thoughts and 
his writing, was unable to bear the presence of a second 
person when busy at his desk. He sat alone, walked 
alone, generally rode alone' ' (214). 

4 'His own health, fiercely as at times he complained 
of it, was essentially robust. He was doing his own duty 
with his utmost energy" (215). 

iSj2, June 29, 7 he Farm. "As for myself I am doing 
my utmost. ... I find myself but a handless work- 
man too often, and can only get on by a dead struggle. 
. . For the rest, I am well enough, and can not 
complain while busy. I go riding every fine morning, 
sometimes as early as six, and enjoy this blessed June 
weather" (238). 

41. "Carlyle took up Diderot. Diderot's works, five 
and twenty large volumes of them, were to be read 
through before he could put pen to paper." 

"He could read with extraordinary perseverence from 
nine in the morning till ten at night without intermission, 
save for his meals and his pipes' 7 (242). 

' 'Meanwhile 'he stuck,' as he said, 'like a bur to his 
reading,' and managed a volume every lawful day (week 
day). On Sabbath he read to his assembled household 
(his wife, the maid, and the stable-boy) in the book of 
Genesis" (243). 



EVIDENCE FROM CHARGES DARWIN. 209 

42. i8j2 i August 31, The Farm. — "My next task is a 
very tedious one, an essay on Diderot; as a preliminary 
for which I have twenty -five octavo volumes to read, and 
only some eight of them done yet. It will serve me till 
the end of September. . . . For the rest, be under 
no fear lest I overwork myself. ... I do not neglect 
walking or riding. ... I have had a kind of fixed 
persuasion of late that I was one day to get quite well 
again, or nearly so. . . . Meanwhile, in my im- 
prisonment here, whether for life or not, I have bethought 
me that I ought to get infinitely more reading than I 
have now means of, and will get it one way or another. 
. . . A very large mass of magazines, reviews, and 
such like, I have consumed like smoke within the last 
month, gaining, I think, no knowledge except of the no- 
knowledge of the writing world." 

' 'Books produce a strange effect on me here; I swal- 
low them with such unpausing impetuosity from early 
morning to late at night, and get altogether filled and in- 
toxicated with them"' (244). 

1832, October 17, The Farm. — "I finished my composi- 
tion the day before yesterday ... a long paper on 
'Diderot,' for Cochrane. I had an immense reading, to 
little purpose otherwise, and am very glad to have it all 
behind me" (254). 

43. 1833 , January 12 \ Edinburgh. — " Arrived here on 
Monday night last. . . . People are kind; I languid, 
bilious, not very open to kindness" (262). 

7833, February 1. — "Know not whither to address the 
little energy I have; sick, too, and on the whole solitary, 
though with men enough about me" (266). 

1833, March 13. — ' 'Beautiful spring day; the season of 
hope! My scribble prospering ill. . . . Sir Wm. 
Hamilton's supper (three nights ago) has done me mis- 
chief; will hardly go to another" (274). 

44. 1833, March 26. — "I have finished my paper on the 

14 



2IO ENERGY-DIVERSION DYSPEPSIA. 

'Quack of Quacks/ but got no new one fallen to. . . . 
I am better resting. I had made myself bilious enough 
with my writing, and had need to recover as I am 
doing" (275). 

1833, March 29. From a letter of nine hundred and 
sixty words. — "This night Gordon invites me to meet 
him at supper, but I can not resolve to go; the man is 
not worth an indigestion. . . . Jane has walked very 
strictly by old Dr. Hamilton's law, without any apparent 
advantage. Her complaint seems like mine, a kind of 
seated dyspepsia; no medicine is of avail, only regimen 
(when one can find it out), free air, and, if it were possi- 
ble, cheerfulness of mind" (278). 

45. "He says that he was invariably sick and miserable 
before he could write to any real purpose. His first 
attempt at the 'Diamond Necklace' had failed, and he had 
laid it aside" (286). 

183% May. Aged 38. — After four months' 
stay in Edinburgh, Carlyle returns to the farm 
(280). 

7833, August 24. The Farjn. — "I am left here the 
solitariest, stranded, most helpless creature that I have 
been for many years. Months of suffering and painful 
indolence I see before me; for in much I am wrong, and 
till righted, or on the way to being so, I can not help 
myself" (286). 

1833, September 7. — "Sickish, with little work, I took 
my walk before dinner." The same day at midnight he 
concludes a letter of seven hundred and eighty words to 
his wife (297). 

46. 1834. February 16. The Farm. — "Beautiful days. 
. . Blackbirds singing this morning — had I not been 
so sick!" 

♦ February 21. — " Still reading, but with indifferent effect. 



EVIDENCE FROM THOMAS CAREYEE. 211 

Homer still grateful — grows easier; one hundred lines 
have been done more than once in an evening." 

1 l Mein Leben geht sehr iibel: all dim, misty, squally, 
disheartening, at times almost heart-breaking." Talks 
seriously of quitting the farm to take up his abode 
in London. "Nothing but the wretchedest, forsaken, 
discontented existence here, where almost your whole 
energy is spent in keeping yourself from flying into 
exasperation" (328). 

1834, January 21. The Farm. — ' 'I, when I take walk- 
ing enough, get along as I was wont in that particular. 
Continued sickness is a miserable thing, yet one learns 
to brave it" (330). 

1834, February 25. — Mrs. Carlyle writes: "Would you 
recommend me to sup on porridge and beer? Carlyle 
takes it" (334). 

47. 1834, May. Aged 39. After a six years' residence 
on the Craigenputtock Farm, Carlyle goes to take up his 
abode in London (335). "He had read omnivorously 
far and wide. His memory was a magazine of facts 
gathered over the whole surface of European literature 
and history. The multiplied allusions in every page of 
his later essays, so easy, so unlabored, revealed the 
wealth which he had accumulated, and the fullness of 
command over his possessions" (336). 

48. 1834, July 22. — "Mill has lent me about a hundred 
books; I read continually, and the matter is dimly shap- 
ing itself in me." Preparing to write the "French Revo- 
lution" (356). 

1834, July 24. — After some very gloomy entries in his 
journal: "Bad health, too (at least, singularly changed 
health), brings all manner of dispiritment. Despicablest 
fears of coming to absolute beggary, etc., etc., besiege 
me" (358). 

49. 1834, August 13. — "Weary, dispirited, sick, for- 
saken, every way heavy laden I Can not tell what is to 



212 KNKRGY-DIVKRSION DYSPEPSIA. 

become of that 'French Revolution ;' vague, boundless, 
without form and void — Gott hilfmir" (359). 

1834, August 13. — ' 'All of us have tolerable health. 
. . . I certainly not worse, and now more in the 
ancient accustomed fashion, I am diligent with the 
shower-bath; my pilgrimages to the museum and on 
other town errands keep me in walking enough" (361). 

50. 1834, September 1. — "We spoke long ago about a 
freight of eatable goods we wanted out of Annandale at 
the fall of the year. . . . Here is the list of our 
wants. . . . First, sixty pounds of butter in two 
equal pigs (the butter here is i6d. a pound); secondly, a 
moderately-sized sweet-milk cheese; next, two smallish 
bacon hams (your beef ham was just broken into last 
week, and is in the best condition): next, about fifteen 
stone of right oatmeal (or even more, for we are to give 
Hunt some stones of it, and need almost a pound daily; 
there is not now above a stone left; and after that, as 
many hundredweights of potatoes as you think will keep 
(for the rule of it is this: we take two pounds daily, and 
they sell here at three half-pence, or at lowest a penny a 
pound, and are seldom good); all this got ready and 
packed into a hogshead or two will reach us by White- 
haven" (367). 

51. 1834-, September 21. — "I have not earned sixpence 
since I came hither, and see not that I am advancing 
towards such a thing. . . . The best news is that I 
have actually begun that 'French Revolution,' and after 
two weeks of blotching and bloring have produced two 
clean pages. . . . But my hand is out; and I am 
altering my style too, and trouble about many things. 
Bilious, too, in these smothering windless days. . . . 
Seriously, when in good spirits I feel as if there were the 
matter of a very considerable work within me; but the 
task of shaping and uttering will be frightful" (368). 

52. 1834, October, — ' 'The beef ham daily plays its part. 



EVIDENCE FROM THOMAS CARXYI.E. 21% 

at breakfast. . . . We get coffee to breakfast (at 
eight or nearly so), have very often mutton chops to 
dinner at three, then tea at six; we have four pennyworth 
of cream, two pennyworth of milk daily." This was 
written to his mother to hasten the arrival of the provi- 
sion barrels which were needed and had been expected 
earlier (369). 

53. i8jj, November 27. — :: It is many days since I have 
written aught here; days of suffering, of darkness, 
despondency; great, yet not too great for me. Ill health 
has much to do with it, ill success with the book has 
somewhat" (378). 

"1835. — Twelve o'clock has just struck: the last hour 
of 1834, the first of a new year. . . . I, after a day 
of fruitless toil, reading and re-reading about that Ver- 
sailles 6th of October still. It is long time since I have 
written anything here. The future looks too black round 
me, the present too doleful, unfriendly. I am too sick 
at heart, wearied, wasted in body, to complain, even to 
myself. . . . My book can not get on, though I stick 
to it like a bur." 

The items of monotonous diet of Carlyle ap- 
pear to have been salt butter, milk, oatmeal, 
potatoes, cheese, hams ("bacon hams" and "beef 
hams"), from early youth till long after he set- 
tled in London. 

FROM THE THIRD VOLUME. 

54. i8j5t February 7. — "The first book of the 'French 
Revolution' is finished. Soul and body both very sick. 
. . . It is now some three and twenty months since I 
have earned one penny by the craft of literature. . . . 
If literature will refuse me both bread and a stomach to 
digest bread, then surely the case is growing clear." A 
thought of quitting literature (16). 



214 KNKRGY-DIVKRSION DYSPEPSIA. 

55- J835i March 6. — "As Carlyle was sitting with his 
wife, 'after working all day like a nigger' at the Feast of 
Pikes," he was informed of the accidental loss by fire 
of his manuscript of the completed first volume of the 
"French Revolution" (23). 

"Carlyle wrote always in a highly-wrought, quasi- 
automatic condition both of mind and nerves. He read 
till he was full of his subject. His notes when they were 
done with were thrown aside and destroyed, and of this 
unfortunate volume, which he had produced as if 'pos- 
sessed' while he was about it, he could remember noth- 
ing." 

"Not only were the fruits of five months of steadfast, 
occasionally excessive, and always sickly and painful, 
toil gone irretrievably, but the spirit in which he had 
worked seemed to have fled too, not to be recalled" (24). 

56. 7833, April 10. — "I can in no way get on with this 
wretched book of mine. For the last fortnight, more- 
over, there seems to have been a kind of conspiracy of 
people to ask us out, from every one of which expedi- 
tions, were it only to 'tea and no party,' I returned 
lamed for the next day. My sight, inward as well as 
outward, is all as if bedimmed. I grow desperate, but 
that profits not" (28). 

' 'There was no hope now of the promised summer 
holiday. . . . Holidays were not now to be thought 
of, at least till the loss was made good" (29)% 

57. 7835, April 70. Aged 4.0. — "I assure you my 
health is not bad nor worsening. I am yellow, indeed, 
and thin, and feel that a rest will be welcome and bene- 
ficial. ... I have more and more a kind of hope I 
shall get well again before my life ends. . . . If it be 
God's ordering, I shall get well. If not, I hope I shall 
work on indomitably as I am" (29). 

On the task of re-writing the burned volume of the 
"French Revolution," he had great difficulty. "The 



EVIDENCE FROM THOMAS CARLYI,E 215 

accelerated speed slackened to slow, and then to no 
motion at all. He sat daily at his desk, but his imagina- 
tion would not work. Early in May, for the days passed 
heavily, and he lost the count of them, he notes 'that at 
no period of his life had he ever felt more disconsolate, 
beaten down, and powerless than then;' as if it were 
'simply impossible that his weariest and miserablest of 
tasks should ever be accomplished.' A man can re-write 
what he has known; but he can not re-write what he has 
felt" (31). 

58. iSjs, May 12. — "I am idling- for these ten days." 
He stopped work from utter inability to make any prog- 
ress at it. "I have many times stood doggedly to work, 
but this is the first time I ever deliberately laid it down 
without finishing it. It has given me very great trouble, 
this poor book." 

"He locked up his papers, drove the subject out of his 
mind, and sat for a fortnight reading novels, English, 
French, German — anything that came to hand, . . . 
and wrote several letters" (31). 

The two weeks' rest was no rest at all, only a 
change to easier mental occupation. 

"Meanwhile, the fortnight's idleness expired; he went 
to work again over his lost volume, but became 'so sick' 
that he still made little progress . . . He was very 
weary, and the books with which he tried to distract him- 
self had no charm" (38). 

59- l8 35, May 26. — "Went on Sunday with Words- 
worth's new volume to Kensington Gardens; got through 
most of it there." Shows how voraciously he read to get 
through a volume almost between two meals. Shows 
also that he did not rest one day in seven. "The book — 
the poor book — can make no progress at all. I sit down 
to it every day, but feel broken down at the end of a 



21 6 ENKRGY-DIVERSION DYSPKPSIA 

page; page, too, not written, only scribbled. . . . 
My bodily health is actually very bad. To get a little 
rest and bloom up again out of this wintry obstruction, 
impotence and dissolution, were the first attainment. 
To-day I am full of dyspepsia, but also of hope. . . . 
Singular, too, how near my extreme misery is to peace. 
. . . No work to-day, as of late days or weeks" (39). 

However, on this same day he wrote more 
than five hundred and thirty words in his jour- 
nal (38, 39). Nine days later, June 4, he is, 
while writing to his mother, "still in a lamed 
condition." 

60. "The effort of writing, always great," for he wrote, 
as his brother said, "with his heart's blood" in a state of 
fevered tension; "the indifference of the world to his past 
work, his uncertain future, his actual poverty, had already 
burdened him beyond his strength. He always doubted 
whether he had any special talent for literature" (40). 

f 833, June J S' — "My poor ill-starred 'French Revolu- 
tion' is lying as a mass of unformed rubbish. . . . My 
way was getting daily more intolerable. . . . There 
was labor nigh insufferable, but no joy, no furtherance. 
My poor nerves, for long months kept at the stretch, felt 
all too waste, distracted" (41). 

61. 1835, J u ty 2 - — "I have decided to falling instantly to 
work again with vigor. . . . The first wish of my 
heart is that it were do?ie in almost any way; weary, most 
weary am I of it. . . . One thing that will gratify you 
is the perceptible increase of health this otherwise so 
scandalous idling has given me" (44). 

Carlyle was disposed to undertake his work 

by storm, rather than to take time and patience 

for it, and build it up. 



EVIDENCE FROM THOMAS CARXYLE. 21 7 

62. * 'Things after this began to brighten* . . . 
Carlyle went vigorously to work, and at last successfully. 
In ten days he had made substantial progress, though 
with 'immense difficulty' still" (44). 

The spirit moves him again, and he makes 
progress (45). 

On September 23, he was able to say that the 
volume was actually written, "that he was en- 
tirely exhausted, and was going to Annandale to 
recover himself " (46). 

63. J835, November 2, Scotsbrig. — "All people say, 
and, what is more to the purpose, I myself rather feel, that 
my health is greatly improved since I got hither. Alas, 
the state of wreckage I was in, fretted, as thou sayest, to 
fiddlestrings, was enormous. Even yet, after a month's 
idleness and much recovery, I feel it all so well. Silence 
for a solar year; this, were it possible, would be my 
blessedness" (51). 

64. j8j5, December 23. Aged 40. — Acknowledges "bad 
bodily health" again (53). "A little overwork hurts me, 
and is found on the morrow to be quite the contrary of 
gain. I have many a rebellious, troublesome thought in 
me, proceeding not a little from ill health of body." 
He acknowledges some inability to govern his thinking 
during ill health (55). 

65. "Thus, throughout this year, 1836, he remained 
fixed at his work in Cleyne Row. He wrote all the 
morning. In the afternoon he walked, sometimes with 
Mill or Sterling, more often alone, making his own 
reflections" (59). 

"He, himself, though he complained, was fairly well; 
nothing was essentially the matter, but he slept badly 
from overwork, 'gaeing stavering aboot the hoose at 



218 KNKRGY-DIVKRSION DYSPEPSIA. 

night,' as the Scotch maid said, restless alike in mind and 
body." 

"The ease which he expected . . . had not been 
found The toil was severe as ever" (59). 

66. 1836, March 22, "Month after month passes with- 
out any notice here. In some four days I expect to be 
done with the chapter called 'Legislative.' It has been 
a long and sorry task. My health, very considerable 
worse than usual, held me painfully back. The work, it 
oftenest seems to me, will never be worth a rush, yet I am 
writing it, as they say, with my heart's blood. The 
sorrow and chagrin I suffer is very great" (60). 

i8j6 y March 21. Same gloomy strain (61). 

67. i8j6, June 1. His dispiritment, sorrow 
and pain are great. " Wearied of all things, 
almost of life itself (62). 

The second volume of the "French Revolution" 
finished, Carlyle "had six weeks of real rest and 
pleasure" (62). The article on Mirabeau was 
written in two weeks, and for this Carlyle re- 
ceived £50 (63). 

68. 1836, July 24. Six hundred and eighty or more 
words, to his wife. — "I worked all day, not all night; 
indeed, oftenest not at night at all; but went out and had 
long swift-striding walks — till ten — under the stars. I 
have also slept, in general, tolerably. For the last ten 
days, however, I have been poisoned again with veal 
soup, beef being unattainable. ... A hundred pages 
more, and this cursed book is flung out of me. I mean 
to write with force of fire till that consummation; above all 
with the speed of fire; still taking intervals, of course, 
and resting myself. The unrested horse, or writer, can 
not work. . . . For two or three days I have the 
most perfect rest now. Then Louis is to be tried and 



EVIDENCE FROM THOMAS CARLYLE. 2 10, 

guillotined. Then the Gironde, etc. It all stands 
pretty fair in my head, nor do I mean to investigate much 
more about it" (64). 

69. 1836, August /.— "Have finished chapter one, of 
my third volume, and gone idle a week after. . . . 
And do this day begin my second chapter" (65). 

1836, October 23. — "It has grown profitless, wearisome, 
to write or speak of one so sick, forlorn as myself" (71). 

783/, January ij. — "Five days ago I finished, about ten 
o'clock at night, and was ready both to weep and pray. 
. . . It has gone as near to choking the life out of me 
as any task I should like to undertake for some years to 
come" (73). The "French Revolution" is referred to. 

70. i8jy } January 22. Aged 42. — "I have had a very 
sore wrestle for two years and a half, but it is over, you 
see, and the thing is there. . . . Jane treated me to 
a bread-pudding next day, which bread-pudding I con- 
sumed with an appetite got by walking far and wide, I 
dare say about twenty miles over this 'large and populous 
city.' My health is really better than anybody could 
expect. The foundations of this lean frame of mine 
must be as tough as wire. If I were rested a little, I 
should forget the whole thing, and have a degree of 
freedom and a lightness of heart unknown to me for a 
long while" (81). 

"He made no foul copy of this or of anything that he 
wrote in these early days. The sentences completed 
themselves in his head before he threw them upon paper, 
and only verbal alterations were afterwards necessary" 

(82). 

71. 183/, May 30. — He has made a success of his first 
attempt with a course of lectures. "My own health is 
not fundamentally hurt. Rest will cure me. I must be 
a toughish kind of a lath after all; for my life here these 
three years has been sore and stern; almost frightful. 
... I grow better daily; I delve, as you heard; I 



2 20 KNKRGY-DIVKRSION DYSPEPSIA. 

walk much, generally alone through the lanes and parks" 
(90). 

72. 1837, Jime. — ' 'Carlyle fled to Scotland fairly broken 
down. He had fought and won his long battle. The 
reaction had come, and his strangely organized nervous 
system was shattered" (92). 

^37, July 27, Scotsbrig. — "They say I am growing- 
better. I do believe it is a kind of road toward better - 
ness that I am traveling." He is taking a sensible vaca- 
tion, not employing his mind with anything like work. 

73- J 837, October g, London. — "People all say 'how 
much better you look!' The grand improvement I 
trace is that of being far calmer than I was. . . . 
When one is turned of forty and has had almost twenty 
years of stomach disease to draw upon ... a 
voice from the interior of the liver cries out, etc." (99). 

At work again, November 15, on an article on Sir 
Walter Scott. "He began it with indifference. The 
'steam got up', and he fell into what he called the old 
sham happy, nervously excited mood too well known to 
him." 

74. 1838 y February 75. — "We are generally alone in 
the evenings, tranquil over our books and papers. What 
visitors and visiting we have are in the middle of the day. 
With my will I would go out nowhere in the evening. It 
never fails to do me more or less harm" (107). 

Of a party he attended: "The whole thing went off 
very well, and I returned about one in the morning with 
a headache that served me for more than a day after. 
'It will help your lectures.' Jane said. Maybe so; but in 
the meantime it has quite hindered my natural sleep and 
composure" (108). 

1838, February — u AW Saturday sick and nervous" 

(in). 

1838, March 8. — "Went to a soiree of Miss Martineau's. 
. . . I go as rarely as I can to such things, for they 



EVIDENCE FROM THOMAS CARXYI^E. 221 

always do me ill. A book at home is suitabler, with a 
quiet pipe twice in the evening, innocent spoonful of 
porridge at ten, and bed at eleven" (114). 

75. 1838 ', April 12. — "There is a shivering precipitancy 
in me which makes emotion of any kind a thing to be 
shunned. It is my nerves, my nerves. The poor chaos 
is bad enough, but with nerves one might stand it." 

1838, May 73. — On the day of lecturing on Voltaire he 
was " stupid and sick beyond expression; also I did not 
like the man, a fatal circumstance of itself. . . . On 
the Shakespeare day I entered all palpitating, fluttering 
with sleeplessness and drug taking, with visitors, and 
the fatal et cetera of things" (117). 

Here, as in many other places, it appears that 
Carlyle was a man so weak mentally as to be 
without power to guide himself, to determine on 
any course of action, to make or keep any 
resolves; always talking of quitting literature and 
London, and never doing either; always a crea- 
ture of circumstance, afloat, adrift; never settled, 
always undecided (118). 

76. He suffered for lecturing. "The lecture course 
was perhaps too prolonged. Twelve orations such as 
Carlyle was delivering were beyond the strength of any 
man who meant every word that he uttered" (119). 

1838, June. — "Fame brought its accompaniments of 
invitations to dinner which could not all be refused; the 
dinners brought indigestions; and the dog-days brought 
heat, and heat and indigestion together made sleep im- 
possible. His letters to his brother are full of lamenta- 
tion" (120). 

1838, July 27. — "After lectures came a series of dinner- 
work and racketings; came hot weather, coronation up- 



222 KNKRGY-DIVKRSION DYSPEPSIA. 

roars, and at length sleeplessness, collapse, inertia, . 
. . I like that existence very ill; my nerves are not 
made for it" (121). 

77. "I corrected a few proof-sheets. I read a few- 
books, dull as Lethe. 1 have done nothing else what- 
ever that I could help, except live. . . . My diges- 
tion is very bad; I should say, however, that my heart 
and life is on the whole sounder than it was last year" 
(122). 

7839, February. — ' 'Seldom had Carlyle seemed in bet- 
ter spirits than now. . . . He had occasional fits of 
dyspepsia, which, indeed, seemed to affect him most 
when he had least that was real to complain of. . . . 
But the dyspepsia was the main evil — dyspepsia and 
London society, which interested him more than he 
would allow, and was the cause of the disorder" (133). 

78. 1839, March. — After his first dinner with the Bar- 
ings: "It was one of the most elevated affairs I had ever 
seen. . . . The lady of the house, one Lady Harriet 
Baring, I had to sit and talk with specially for a long, 
long while — one of the cleverest creatures I have met 
with. . . . The dinner was after eight, and ruined 
me for a week. . . . She kept me talking an hour or 
more upstairs" (134). 

79. 1839, April 16. Aged 44. — "As to the praise, etc., 
I think it will not hurt me much; I can see too well what 
the meaning of that is. I have too faithful a dyspepsia 
working continually in monition of me, were there noth- 
ing else" (136). 

7839, August 13, at Scotsbrig, on a two months^ vaca- 
tion. — "I am no man whom it is desirable to be too close 
to — an unhappy mortal at least, with nerves that preap- 
point me to continual pain and loneliness, let me have 
what crowds of society I like" (143). 

80. 1839, October 8, — "I go out to ride daily. . . . 
My horse is in the best order, and does seem to do me . 



EVIDENCE FROM THOMAS CAKXYI,E. 223 

good. I will try it out, and see what good comes of it, 
dear though it be" (146). 

October 23. — "My riding keeps me solitary. It is all 
executed at calling hours. . . . Green lanes, swift 
riding, and solitude — how much more delightful. For 
two hours every day I have almost an immunity from 
pain. . . . My health is not greatly, yet it is percep- 
tibly, improved. I have distinctly less pain in all hours. 
Much solitude is good for me here" (146). 

81. 1840, February 27. — Anticipates the matter of lec- 
turing again; and the consequent "dinners, routs, callers, 
confusions inevitable, to a certain length. . . . I wish 
I was far from it. No health lies for me in that for body 
or for soul. Welfare, at least the absence of ill fare and 
semi-delirium, is possible forme in solitude only" (151). 

"Carlyle complained when alone, and complained 
when driven into the world; dinner parties cost him his 
sleep; damaged his digestion, damaged his temper. 
Yet when he went into society no one enjoyed it more or 
created more enjoyment. The record of adventures of 
this kind alternates with groans over the consequent suf- 
ferings" (152). 

1840, March 17. — "There, at the dear cost of a shattered 
set of nerves and head set whirling for the next eight- 
and-forty hours, I did see lords and lions" (152). 

82. 1840, March jo. — "I pass my days under the abom- 
inable pressure of physical misery — a man foiled. I 
mean to ride diligently for three complete months, try 
faithfully whether in that way my insufferable burden and 
imprisonment can not be alleviated into at least the old 
degree of endurability. . . . For positively my life 
is black and hateful to me" (153). 

184O) April 23. — "I am sick and very miserable. I 
have kept riding for the last two months. My health 
seems hardly to improve. I have been throwing my 
lectures upon paper — lectures on Heroes. . . . If I 
were a little healthier — ah me! all were well" (154). 



224 ENERGY-DI VERSION DYSPEPSIA. 

83. 1840, May 6. — Having successfully delivered two 
lectures this season, he wrote: "So far it is well enough. 
And now, alas! as the price of a good lecture my nerves 
are thrown into such a flurry that I got little sleep last 
night, and am all out of sorts to-day. Two weeks more 
and the sore business is done, and perhaps I shall never 
try it again" (156). 

184.0, May 20. — The fifth lecture ("The Hero 
as Man of Letters"), one of his best, was also one 
of his easiest, considered before, during and after 
delivery. Because it related to matters more 
familiar and at home and was therefore easier 
work, and for that reason less exhaustive of 
energy and less depressing in after effect (156). 

84. 1840, May 23. — Done lecturing for the season. " I 
will not be in haste to throw myself into such a tumble 
again. It stirs me all up into ferment, fret and confusion, 
such as I hate altogether. ... I will keep my horse 
a w r hile longer, dear as it is, and try a little further 
whether there is not some good use in it — worth twenty- 
five shillings a week — yea or no" (157). 

85. 1840, June 15. — "My soul longs extremely to live 
in the country again, and yet there, too, I should not be 
well. I shall never be other than ill, wearied, sick- 
hearted, heavy-laden, till once we get to the final rest? 
I think. . . . Dinners I avoid as the very devil. 
. . . They ask you to go among champagne, bright 
glitter, semi-poisonous excitements which you do not 
like even for the moment, and you are sick for a week 
after" (160). 

86. 1840, July 15. — "My health continues very un- 
certain, my spirits fluctuating between restless flutter of 
a make-believe satisfaction, and the stillness of avowed 



EVIDENCE FROM THOMAS CAKXYLE. 225 

misery, which latter I have grown by long practice to 
think almost the more supportable state. The meaning, 
I suppose, is that my nervous system is altogether weak, 
excitable — the nervous system and whatsoever depends 
on that" (163). 

87. 1840, December 26. "What is far better, I begin 
to get alive again! So much vitality recovered that I feel 
once more how miserable it is to be idle. ... I 
often long to be in the country again, . . . that I 
might work and nothing else but work. ... I am 
sure to be sick everywhere. I am a little sicker here, 
and do thoroughly dislike the mud, smoke, dirt and 
tumult of this place. . . . Solitude would increase, 
perhaps twofold or more, my power of working. . . . 
My one hope and thought for most part is that very 
shortly it will all be over, my very sore existence ended 
in the bosom of the Giver of it — at rest somehow. Things 
might be written here which it is considerably better not 
to write. As I live, and have long lived, death and 
hades differ little to me from earth and life. The human 
figure I meet is wild, wondrous, ghastly to me, almost as 
if it were a spectre and I a spectre" (172). 

88. 1840, December. — "Carlyle is reading voraciously, 
preparatory to writing a new book. For the rest he 
growls away much in the old style" (173). 

89. 184.1, April 1 J. — Vacations and visits with 
and at the houses of well-to-do friends for short 
times, ten days or so, would improve Carlyle's 
health temporarily by virtue of the incidental 
recreation, diversion and change. But, in ten 
days or so, all that was fresh was got used to, 
and for health's sake change again became neces- 
sary (182). 

15 



226 KNKRGY-DIVKRSION DYSPKPSIA. 

1841, May, — Returns from a vacation "in no very im- 
proved condition. 'I am sick,' he said, 'with a sickness 
more than of body, a sickness of mind and my own 
shame. I ought to know what I am going to work at — 
all lies there.' " Still unwell, he returns to Scotland and 
takes a cottage for the summer (183). 

90. 18 41, July, Scotsbrig. "I live in a silence un- 
equaled for many years. I grow daily better, and am 
really very considerably recovered now. My popularity 
is suffering somewhat by the absolute refusal to see any- 
body whatever. I let it suffer" (184). 

184/, July. — On the first night of his arrival with his 
wife at her mother's house, "he rose at three o'clock in 
the dawning of the July morning, went to the stable, put 
his horse into the gig himself, and drove over to Dum- 
fries to iinish his night's rest there. In the forenoon he 
sent back this account of himself: 'I got away hither much 
better than you perhaps anticipated, I have managed to 
get some hours of sleep. ... I could not make the 
cock hold his tongue on the roost' " (185). 

91. 1847, August 75. — ''Never have I been idler since 
I can remember. If my health do not improve a little, 
it is very hard. I see nobody, will let nobody see me." 

' 'Not a place or a name or a person but was familiar 
to him from his boyhood. . . . Yet he visited no one, 
he allowed no one to speak to him, and he wandered in 
the dusk like a restless spirit amidst the scenes of his 
early dreams and his early sufferings." At the end of 
September he was again in London (188). 

He refers to this vacation as ' 'a life of transcendent 
Zto-Nothingism. . . . Much French rubbish of novels 
read, a German book on Norse and Celtic Paganism, 
little other than trash either. Nothing read, nothing 
thought, nothing done, shame!" 

His sojourn in Annandale cost about £70, and 



EVIDENCE FROM THOMAS CAKXYLE. 227 

was not a success so far as any permanent good 
to his health was concerned (189). 

92. 1841, October 4. — Carlyle tries to begin 
the work of writing on Cromwell, but fails to 
make a start. Carlyle often made unsuccessful 
attempts at work, and seems to have depended 
on impulses, inspirations and spirit-moves to 
start him. 

93. 184.2, February, Aged 47. — Both Carlyle 
and wife are much annoyed at night by cocks 
and hens in the back yard next door. They 
complain to their neighbor with the result of 
provoking the evil to greater dimensions. No 
recourse in law, and talk of shooting the fowls. 

"This despicable nuisance," says Mrs. Carlyle, "is 
not at all unlikely to drive us out of the house after all, 
just after he had reconciled himself to stay in it. How 
one is vexed with the little things of this life >5 (199). 

94. 1842, March, — During his six weeks' stay 
on business at Tampland (where Mrs. Welsh 
had lately died), he wrote daily to his wife (202). 

1842, April. — "As for the house at Chelsea, if you like 
it," he wrote to his wife, "do not regard much my dis- 
like of it. I cannot be healthy anywhere under the sun. 
I am a perceptible degree unhealthier in London than 
elsewhere. . . . To-day I have lain on a sofa and 
read the whole history of the family of Carlyle. Posi- 
tively not so bad reading" (214). 

" Carlyle was always well at sea," and a fre- 
quent traveler by sea — between Liverpool and 
Annan, 



228 KNKRGY-DIVKRSION DYSPEPSIA. 

95. 184.2 y October 25 to December 21. — Again 

shows his inability to begin writing on Cromwell, 

though making many strenuous efforts to do so. 

1843, January.— "My health keeps good, better than 
it used to do. I am fast getting ready something for pub- 
lication too. Though it is not 'Cromwell,' it is some- 
thing more immediately applicable to the times in hand" 

(243). 

96. 184.3, February 23. — "No man was lately busier, 
and few sicklier, than I am now. Work is not possible 
for me except in a red-hot element, which wastes the life 
out of me. I have still three weeks of the ugliest labor, 
and shall be fit for a hospital then. The thing I am upon 
is a volume to be called Tast and Present' " (243). 
"John Carlyle was in Cheyne Row when Tast and Pres- 
ent' came out, and was a stay and comfort to his brother 
in the lassitude which always followed the publication of 
a book" (253). 

97. 1843, August 5. Scotsbrig. — "My determination is 
to rest here for a space. I feel quite smashed, done up, 
and pressingly in need to pause and do nothing whatever. 
I have spread out my things. I sit in the little easternmost 
room sacred from interruption. I will rest now" (271). 

1 'He lay still for a month at Scotsbrig, doing nothing 
save a little miscellaneous reading, and hiding himself 
from human sight." He wrote letters, however, for the 
biographer alludes to "many written during this period of 
eclipse" (271). 

98. 1843, August 16, Scotsbrig. — "I have no appetite 
for writing, for speaking, or in short, doing anything but 
sitting still as a stone." Yet he does at this sitting write 
a letter of six hundred words, involving a good deal of 
thought and therefore effort and energy. The "little 
miscellaneous reading" of this month of "rest" was done 
at the expense of energy. He had now been absent 



EVIDENCE EROM THOMAS CARI.YLE. 229 

about three months and on his way to London he wrote 
to his wife: "Thou wilt hardly know me again. I am 
brown as a berry, face and hands; terribly bilious — sick 
even, yet with a feeling that there is a good stock of new 
health in me had I once leave to subside." Implying the 
utter failure, as usual, of this long vacation as a scheme 
for recovery of health by rest and change (279). 

99. For the writing on * 'Cromwell' ' "his materials 
were all accumulated; he had seen all that he needed to 
see, yet his task still remained impossible" (281). 

1843, October 10. — "Began yesterday to dine at 2:30. 
Perhaps it will do me good on the dyspeptic side. 
Walked from three to six yesterday afternoon" (282). 

100. 1844, February 2, Journal. — "Engaged in a book 
on the 'Civil Wars;^ on Oliver Cromwell, or whatever 
the name of it prove to be; the most frightfully impossible 
book of all I have ever before tried. It is several years 
since the thing took hold of me. I have read hundred- 
weights of dreary books, searched dusty manuscripts, 
corresponded, etc., etc., almost with no results whatever. 
How often have I begun to write, and after a certain pe- 
riod of splunging and splashing found that there was yet no 
basis for me. Since my return from Scotland and Wales 
and the North in September last it is just about five 
months complete. Most part of that time I have been 
really assiduous with this book, or one or the other 
adjuncts of it, and there really stands now on my paper 
in any available shape, as it were correctly — nothing. 
Much I have blotted, fairly burnt out of my way. What 
will become of it and me? Sometimes I get extremely 
distressed" (286). 

101. 18S4, May 8. — "My progress in 'Cromwell' is 
frightful. I am no day absolutely idle, but the con- 
fusions that lie in my way require far more fire of energy 
than I can muster on most days, and I sit not so much 
working as painfully looking on work. A thousand 



230 KNKRGY-DIVKRSION DYSPEPSIA. 

times I have regretted that this book was ever taken up. 
. . . I am very weak in health, too. I am oftenest 
very sad" {239). 

102. 1845, August 18. — "As a preliminary I have started 
to-day by — a blue pill and castor. Oh heavens! But I 
suppose it was the most judicious step of all" (303). 

1845 1 August 23. — Writing of an intended vacation trip 
to Scotland: "I could also be a very pretty guest at Sea- 
forth, I too for a few days, and be happy and much liked, 
if the devil of sleeplessness and indigestion did not mark 
me for a peculiar man. I do hope to have done all my 
Oliver writing, good heavens! the day after to-morrow" 

(304). 

* 'Cromwell thus disposed of, he was off for Scotland, 
'wishing,' as he said, to be amiable, but dreadfully bil- 
ious, and almost sick of his life, if there were not hopes 
of improvement" (311 j. 

103. 1846, April 8. — Preparing a second and enlarged 
edition, he wrote: "A considerable gap is made in 
the 'Cromwell' rubbish. It is fast disappearing before 
me. Heigho! but my existence is not so haggard as it 
was some days past. The sun is shining, the work go- 
ing on all day" (320). 

104. 7846, August 8, Scotsbrig. — "Soon after my 
arrival, I flung myself upon a bed and fell fast asleep. 
I am very unwell, so far as literary and other confusions 
go. Yesterday I did not sleep long, and to-day I woke 
at four o'clock" (333). 

When Carlyle was, as he said, idle, he was 

really generally reading a great deal; though, 

perhaps, without definite aim or purpose: — 

c ' Total idleness still rules over me. . . . Plenty of 
good tobacco, worthless Yankee literature, and many 
ruminations on the moor or linn — that is all. . . . 
In spite of cocks, children, bulls, cuddies, and various 



EVIDENCE FROM THOMAS CARLYLE. 23 1 

interruptions at night, I victoriously snatch some modi- 
cum of real sleep for most part, and could certainly im- 
prove in health were a continuance of such scenes of 
quiet permitted me. But it is not. I must soon lift 
anchor again and go" (337). 

105. 1848, January. — On a visit of some days at the 
Barings: ''For him there was no peace but in work, and 
life in such houses was organized idleness. To his 
mother he speaks of himself as wandering disconso- 
lately on the shore watching the gangs of Portsmouth 
convicts; to his wife as 'unslept, dyspeptic, bewildered' " 
(356). 

FROM THE THIRD VOLUME. 

106. Carlyle had returned from a tour of Ire- 
land, and was staying quietly at Scotsbrig about 
twenty-three days. Scotsbrig, too, was not agree- 
ing with him. "Last night I awoke at three, 
and made nothing more of it, owing to cocks 
and other blessed fellow inhabitants of this 
planet" (9). 

On the way to Glen Truim, he stopped in Fife 
to see his wife, and "had." he says, "a miserable 
enough hugger-mugger time; my own blame." 

107. 1849 1 September 2, Glen Truim. — "What can I do 
but write to you ? . . . It is my course whenever I am 
out of sorts or in low spirits among strangers; emphati- 
cally my case just now, , . . with a nervous system 
all 'dadded about ' by coach travel, rail travel, multiplied 
confusion, and finally by an almost totally sleepless 
night" (9). 

Three weeks of solitude at Scotsbrig, to 
which he hastened to retreat, scarcely repaired 
his sufferings at Glen Truim. 



232 ENERGY-DIVERSION DYSPEPSIA. 

108. 184.9 , September 77, Scotsbrig. — "I am lazy be- 
yond measure. I sleep and smoke, and would fain do 
nothing else at all. If they would but let me sit alone in 
this room, I think I would be tempted to stay long in it 
forgetting and forgotten, so inexpressibly is my poor 
body and poor soul. . . . The fact is that just now I 
am very weary, and the more sleep I get I seem to grow 
wearier" (12). 

1849, September 25. — "For two nights past I have got 
into the bad habit of dividing my sleep in two; waking a 
couple of hours by way of interlude, and then sleeping 
till ten o'clock — a bad habit, if I could mend it; but who 
can? My two hours of waking pass in wondrous resusci- 
tations and reviews of all manner of dead events " (13). 

109. 1849, November 16. Aged §4. — "A sad feature in 
employments like mine, that you cannot carry them on 
continuously. My work needs all to be done with my 
nerves in a kind of blaze; such a state of soul and body 
as would soon kill me, if not intermitted. I have to rest 
accordingly; to stop and sink into total collapse, the get- 
ging out of which again is a labor of labors " (19). 

no. 1850, February 7. — "The pamphlets are all as bad 
as need be. If I could but get my meaning explained at 
all, I should care little in what style it was. But my state 
of health and heart is highly unfavorable. Nay, worst of 
all, a kind of stony indifference is spreading over me. I 
am getting weary of suffering, feel as if I could sit down 
in it and say, Well, then, I shall soon die at any rate. 
Truly all human things, fames, promotions, pleasures, 
prosperities, seem to me inexpressibly contemptible at 
times' ' (24). 

in. 18 jo. — ' ' Many an evening, about this time, ' ' writes 
the biographer, alluding to the " Latter-day Pamphlets," 
" I heard him flinging off the matter intended for the rest 
of the series which had been left unwritten, pouring out, 
for hours together, a torrent of sulphurous denunciation. . 



EVIDENCE FROM THOMAS CARIAXE. 233 

No one could check him. If anyone tried contradiction, 
the cataract rose against the obstacle till it rushed over it 
and drowned it. But, in general, his listeners sat silent." 
"The imagery, his wild play of humor, the immense 
knowledge always evident in the grotesque forms which 
it assumed, were in themselves so dazzling and so enter- 
taining, that we lost the use of our own faculties till it 
was over. He did not like making these displays? and 
avoided them when he could; but he was easily provoked, 
and when excited could not restrain himself " (35). 

112. "The dinner with Sir Robert Peel was in the sec- 
ond week in May. The ostensible object was to bring 
about a meeting between Carlyle and Prescott " (35). 

1850, August; at Savage Landor' s, in ijW/j.— "Dinner 
was elaborately simple. The brave Landor forced me 
to talk far too much, and we did very near a bottle of 
claret, besides two glasses of sherry; far too much liquor 
and excitement for a poor fellow like me." He does not 
record any suffering for and after this dinner and talk 
with Landor (42). 

After a three weeks' vacation and a trip to Scotsbrig 
he wrote: "I am a very unthankful, ill-conditioned, bil- 
lious, wayward, and heartworn son of Adam, I do sus- 
pect" (45). 

113. 1850, September 6, Scotsbrig. — "Nothing so like a 
Sabbath has been vouchsafed to me for many heavy 
months as these last two days at poor Scotsbrig are. Let 
me be thankful for them. They were very necessary to 
me. They will open my heart to sad and affectionate 
thoughts, which the intolerable burden of my own mean 
sufferings has stifled for a long time. I do nothing here, 
and pretend to do nothing but sit silent, etc." (47). 

At Scotsbrig, at the age of 55 years, Carlyle " filled his 
letters with anecdotes of misfortunes, miseries, tragedies, 
among his Annandale neighbors, mocking at the idea 
that this world was made for happiness " (48). 



234 ENERGY-DIVERSION DYSPEPSIA. 

"The kindness of these friends [he said], their very 
kindness, works me misery of which they have no idea. 
In the gloom of my own imagination, I seem to myself a 
pitiable man. Last night I had, in spite of noises and 
confusions many, a tolerable sleep, most welcome to me, 
for on the Monday night here I did not sleep at all. . . . 
No minute can I be left alone, . . . but every minute 
I must talk, talk. God help me!" And much more of 
very gloomy sort (48). 

"It was in this humor that Carlyle read ' Alton Locked 
. . . and it speaks volumes for the merit of that book, 
that at such a time Carlyle could take pleasure in it" (49). 

114. 1850, October, visiting. — "At the Marshalls' he 
was prevented from sleeping by 'poultry, children, and 
flunkejs. 1 " 

1850. During this summer's vacation of three 
months spent in various ways and places, he was 
everywhere dyspeptic, sleepless, irritable, and in 
low spirits; and returns in October to London 
in the condition of a man who needs to enter 
upon a period of rest, instead of one who has 
just concluded a long vacation. At the end of 
this vacation he spends " ten days amid miscella- 
neous company in the common dyspeptic, utterly 
isolated, and contemptible condition" (53). 

115. "Unable to produce anything, he began to read 
voraciously. . . . ' I fly out of the way of everybody, 
and would much rather smoke a pipe of wholesome to- 
bacco than talk to any one in London just now ' " (54). 

"I shut up the book last night " (55), shows him to be 
reading at nights as usual. 

1850, December 14.—" I am myself decidedly better 
than when I wrote last— have, in fact, nothing wrong 



Evidence; from thomas cariax^. 235 

about me except an incurably squeamish liver and stom- 
ach. I generally go out for an hour's walking before 
bedtime " (56). 

1850, December 30. — u I can get to no work. * . 
Of course the thing is difficult, most things are, but I 
continually fly from it too, and my poor days pass in the 
shabbiest, wastefulest manner" (56), 

116. Early in 1851. — "Having leisure on his hands, and 
being otherwise in the right mood, he re-read Sterling's 
letters, collected information from surviving relations, 
and without difficulty— indeed, with entire ease and ra- 
pidity — he produced in three months what is perhaps the 
most beautiful biography in the English language. His 
own mind for the past year had been restless and agitated, 
but no restlessness can be traced in the 'Life of Sterling' " 

(57). 

117. 1851, April 5. — "lam weak, very irritable, too, 
under my bits of burdens, and bad company for anybody, 
and shall need a long spell of the country somewhere, if 
I can get it" (64). 

1831, May j.— i( l am sick, very sad, and as usual for a 
long time back, not able to get on with anything " (67). 

1837, Summer. — "He fled to Malvern for the water- 
cure, and became, with his wife, for a few weeks the 
guest of Dr. Gully. . . . The bathing, packing, drink- 
ing proved useless — worse, in his opinion, than useless. 
He found, by degrees, that water, taken as medicine, 
was the most destructive drug he had ever tried. . . . 
He stayed a month in all. . . . He hastened to hide 
himself in Scotsbrig, full of gloom and heaviness, and 
totally out of health " (68). 

He stayed at Scotsbrig three weeks. " Next went by 
invitation to Paris. The first forty-eight hours were tol- 
erable. . . . The third and fourth nights sleep unfor- 
tunately failed. . . . He grew desperate. Returned 
home by express train and Calais packet in one day" 



236 ENERGY-DIVERSION DYSPEPSIA. 

118. At the age of 56 years Carlyle resolved to write a 
book on Frederick of Prussia. An immense undertaking, 
but he resolved to try. " For Carlyle to write a book on 
Frederick would involve the reading of a mountain of 
books, memoirs, journals, letters, state papers. . . . 
He would have to travel over a large part of Germany, 
to see Berlin and Potsdam, to examine battle-fields and 
the plans of campaigns. He would have to make a spe- 
cial study, entirely new to him, of military science and 
the art of war " (73). 

119. l8jjy December 8. — "I executed a deal of riding 
yesterday, and after near four hours' foot and horse ex- 
ercise, was at South Place litlle after time. 'Mutton- 
chop with Ford ? ' There was a grand dinner. ... I 
got away about eleven, not quite ruined, though not in- 
tending to go back soon " (75). 

1851, December 12. — Works at night when 
company permits. Company proves an affliction 
often. 

120. 1852 > January. — "Carlyle was at the Grange the 
last three weeks of 185 1. . . . Rode daily, got no 
other good. . . . Huge company coming and going. 
. . . Infinitely glad to get home again to a slighter 
measure of dyspepsia, inertia, and other heaviness, in- 
eptitude, and gloom. . . . Keep reading Frederick. 
. . . I make slow progress, and am very sensible how 
lame I now am in such things " (76). 

"Six months now followed of steady. reading and ex- 
cerpting. He went out little, excepting to ride in the 
afternoons, or walk at midnight when the day's work was 
over. A few friends were admitted occasionally to tea." 
During these six months of reading, he is more or less ill 
and irritable (77). 

121. 1852, July z?.— Arranging to visit a friend for ten 



EVIDENCE FROM THOMAS CARXYI<E. 237 

days, he writes: " Could you leave me daily six hours 
strictly private for my German reading, and send me 
down once a day to bathe in your glorious sea? " (79). 

On a voyage by steamer to Fife, spent almost 
all of his time reading, slept well both nights, 
and is better for the trip (80). 

1852, July 26, Linlathan. — "I am terribly bilious, though 
it might be hard to say why; everything is so delightfully 
kind and appropriate here. . . . Hitherto I have 
always got a fair day's work done. . . . Go out and 
smoke at intervals, as at home, etc. In fact, I am almost 
too well cared for and attended to. The only evil is that 
they will keep me in talk. Alas! how much happier I 
should be not talking or talked to! I require an effort to 
get my victuals eaten for talk " (80). 

" It was his own fault," says the biographer, "his talk 
was so intensely interesting, so intensely entertaining. 
No one who heard him flowing on, could have guessed 
at the sadness which weighed upon him when alone. 
. . . After a fortnight with the Erskines, he escaped 
to Scotsbrig," where he stayed till August 30, all the 
time more or less dyspeptic and sleeping poorly (81). 

122. 1852, August jo. — Starts to Germany. 
His letters are extremely long. They are the 
diary of his adventures (84, 85). 

1852, September 6, Bonn. — " But writing of all kinds in 
these sad biliary circumstances, with half-blind eyes, and 
stooping over low, rickety tables, is perfectly unpleasant 
to me " (85). 

September 20; in some former quarters of Luther, — 
"In my torn-up, sick, exasperated humor I could have 
cried, but I did not" (95). 

September 25. — "I had to sit by the Duchess at dinner 



238 ENERGY-DIVERSION DYSPEPSIA. 

three p. m. to five, and maintain with energy a singularly 
empty intellectual colloquy, in French chiefly, in English 
and in German. The lady being half deaf withal, you 
may think how charming it was." 

123. Mrs. Carlyle wrote: "Mr. C. seems to be getting 
very successfully through his travels, thanks to the 
patience and helpfulness of Neuberg. He makes in every 
letter frightful misereres over his sleeping accomodations; 
but he can not conceal that he is really pretty well, and 
gets sleep enough to go on with, more or less pleasantly" 
(98). 

1852, September 25. — Carlyle writes late, till 

after midnight (98). About his health on the 

German tour of forty days: — 

"It was a journey done as in some shirt of Nessus; 
misery and dyspeptic degradation, inflammation, and 
insomnia tracking every step of me" (102). 

124. 1852, November 9. Aged 57. — "My survey of the 
last eight or nine years of my life yields little 'comfort' in 
the present state of my feelings. Silent weak rage, re- 
morse even, which is not common with me; and, on the 
whole, a solitude of soul coupled with helplessness, 
which are frightful to look upon, difficult to deal with in 
my present situation." 

'Tor my health is miserable too; diseased liver I pri- 
vately percieve has much to do with the phenomenon; 
and I can not yet learn to sleep again. During all my 
travels I have wanted from a third to half of my usual 
sleep. . . . I am growing to percieve that I have be- 
come an old man" (104). 

125. After a visit to the Grange (Ashburton's) 
in March, 1853, he said: — 

"Worse than useless to me. ... A long night- 
mare; folly and indigestion the order of the day" (108). . 



EVIDENCE FROM THOMAS CARI«YI,E. 239 

"To try to work Carlyle was determined enough. He 
went nowhere in the summer, but remained at Chelsea 
chained to 'Frederick/ and, moving ahead at last, leav- 
ing his wife to take a holiday'' (in). 

^53 1 July 9. To Erskine.—"\ had a very miserable 
tour in Germany; not one night of sleep all the time" 
(112). ---^^^ 

126. 1853, July 23. To his wife.— ' 'You may judge 
with what feelings I read your letter last night, and again 
and again read it; how anxiously I expect what you will 
say to-night. ... I have done my task to-day 
again, but I had drugs in me, and am not in a very 
vigorous humor. My task is a most dreary one. I am 
too old for blazing up round this Fritz and his affairs; 
and I see it will be a dreadful job to riddle his history into 
purity and consistency out of the endless rubbish of so 
many dullards as have treated of it. But I will try, too. 
I can not yet afford to be beaten" 

1270 1833, August 17. — "All summer, which I resolved 
to spend here, at least without the distraction of travel 
for a new hindrance, I have been visibly below par in 
health; annoyed with innumerable paltry things; and, to 
crown all, a true mock crown — with the cro wings, shriek- 
ings and half maddening noises of a stock of fowls 
which my poor neighbor has set up for his profit and 
amusement. ... I can do no work though I still 
keep trying'' (116). 

128. 1854, February 28. Aged 39. — "Not quite idle; 
always indeed professing to work; but making, as it were, 
no way at all. ... In truth I am weak and forlorn 
to a degree" (125). 

"The year 1854 was spent almost entirely in London 
. . . 'in dismal continual wrestle' with 'Frederick,' 
the 'unexecutable book,' and rather in 'bilious condi- 
tion' " (128). 

"The cocks had been finally abolished, purchased out 



240 ENERGY-DIVERSION DYSPEPSIA. 

of existence by a ^5 note and Mrs. Carlyle's diplomacy. 
Thus they 'were quiet as mice,' he working with all his 
might, dining out nowhere, save once with the Proctors, 
to meet Dickens, and finding it the most hideous even- 
ing he 'had for years/ under these conditions 'Frederick' 
ought to have made progress. . . . But it seemed as 
if it could not'' (131). 

129. 1854, April. — "No way made with my book, nor 
likely to be made. I am in a heavy, stupefying state of 
health, too, and have no capacity of grasping the big 
chaos that lies round me, and reducing it to order. 
. . . I dream horribly — the fruit of incurable bilious- 
ness" (131). 

1854, June. — "Totally unable, from illness, etc., to get 
any hold of the ugly chaos, wide as the world, which I 
am called to subdue into the form of work done, I rushed 
out yesterday and took a violent, long, fatiguing walk" 

(135)- 

130. On the day just alluded to, Carlyle "wrote some 
business notes . . . after breakfast. . . . Then 
examined the scribble I had been doing. 
Totally without worth! Decided to run out, as above 
said. Out at half past one p. m., return towards five. 
Asleep on the sofa before dinner at half past five; take 
my 'Schlosser,' vol. 4; can do little at it till tea. .... 
Brother John enters at eight; gossip with him till nine; 
then out to escort him home, getting three-quarters of an 
hour of walking to myself withal. . . . Read till one 
A. M. . . . To bed then, having learned little. 
. . . My eyes are very dim; bad light (from the sky 
direct) though abundant. Chiefly the state of liver, I 
suppose, which indeed in itself and its effects is beyond 
description" (136). 

131. In February, 1855, M rs - Carlyle pre- 
sented her husband with a statement on their 



EVIDENCE FROM THOMAS CARXYI^E. 24 1 

domestic economies, from which we learn that 
the Carlyles burned an average of twelve tons 
of coal per year, and of candles at the rate of a 
pound in three days, and of dips at the rate of a 
pound in a week. This is the yearly average — 
"the greater part of the year you sit so late" 
(141). Carlyle was accustomed, at least up to 
this time, to provide the winter's butter. This 
butter was also accustomed to become — the rem- 
nant of it — uneatable before it was all consumed. 
So it must be that a part of the time they had 
stale butter, and the butter thus procured in bulk 
from his relations in Scotland must have been 
what we know as pickled or salt butter, and 
therefore rather more conducive to indigestion 
than first-rate fresh butter would be as will be 
shown in my third essay (143). 

132. " 'Frederick* meanwhile,. in spite of lamentations 
over failure, was at last moving. Carlyle had stood 
steadily to it for eighteen months, and when August 
came he required rest and change" (149). 

1855, August 1 to 10; at Woodbridge with Fitzgerald 
about nine days. — "He for his part, enjoyed himself 
exceptionally; he complained of nothing. Place, lodg- 
ing, company were equally to his mind" (149). 

J 33- J ^SSy September 2, "Sunday midnight" 
— A very gloomy letter of four hundred and 
fifty words dated at midnight. He was out 
walking alone three and a half hours of the 
Sunday. 

16 



242 KNKRGY-DIVKRSION DYSPKPSIA. 

" After dinner I read for an hour, smoked, then sat 
down by the fire, and, waiting to ring for a candle, fell 
into a nightmare sleep till almost nine" (151). 

134. Carlyle went to Scotsbrig in the summer 
of 1856, took his work with him and toiled on 
steadily (155). 

1856, August 7, Scotland. — l 'I seem to be doing really 
excellently in regard to health" (156). 

" He continued well in health. Never in his life had 
he more the kind of chance he was always crying out for 
— 'perfect kindness and nearly perfect solitude, the 
freshest of air, wholesomest of food, riding horse, and 
every essential provided.' . . . 'He had got some 
work done,' 'made a real impression on the papers he 
had brought with him' " (156). 

135. 1857, June 11 , London. — "Probably I am rather 
better in health; the industrious riding of this excellent 
horse sometimes seems to myself to be slowly telling on 
me; but I am habitually in sombre, mournful mood, 
conscious of great weakness, a defeated kind of creature. 
. . . All my days and hours go to that sad task of 
mine. At it I keep weakly grubbing and puddling, 
weakly but steadily; try to make daily some little way as 
now almost the one thing useful" (159). 

136. 1857, July 26. — "To confess truth, I have had for 
almost a week past a fit of villainous headaches, fever- 
ishness, etc., which I at first attributed to oxtail soup, 
but now discover to be cold caught sitting in the sweep 
of the wind under the awning. I have been at proofs 
again all day. I am getting on slow, like an old spavined 
horse, but never giving in. The gloom of my soul is 
perfect at times, for I have feverish headaches, and no 
human company, or absolutely none that is not ugly to 
me" (1S3). 



KVIDKNCK FROM THOMAS CAKXYI^. 243 

1857, August 5. — { 'Sunday I started broad awake at 
3 a. m., went downstairs, out, smoked a cigar on a 
stool." 

137. 185 J, September /.—Has been two weeks 
alone and is in good humor, and even lenient in 
speech about organ-grinders, pianists and ac- 
cordeonists who play in his hearing. Early this 
month Mrs. Carlyle came home. Work went 
on without interruption. The horse was satis- 
factory, riding was late in the afternoon, and 
lasted long after dark, along the suburban roads 

(166). 

He spent December 25, 26, 27, in <c grim contention all 
day each time with the most refractory set of proof-sheets 
I expect in this work" (166). 

138. 1858, March 22, — "lam not worth seeing, nor is 
anybody much worth being seen by me in my present 
mood and predicament, I never was so solitary intrinsic- 
ally. I refuse all invitations, and, except meeting peo- 
ple in the street, have next to no communication with 
my external fellow creatures. I walk with difficulty 
long snatches. ... I begin to find I must have my 
horse back again one of these days. My poor inner 
man reminds me that such will be my duty" (168). 

139. In the second week in June, 1858, the 
first instalment, two volumes, of the work on 
'Frederick' was complete and off his hands. 
For six years he had been laboring over it, and 
had been giving the subject a great deal of 
anxious thought before actually settling down 
to work at it. During six years he "had with- 



244 ENERGY-DIVERSION DYSPEPSIA. 

drawn from all society save that of his most 
intimate friends The effect had been enormous. 
He was now sixty-three years old" (170). 
The immediate necessity now was for rest. 

"When the strain was taken off, Carlyle fell into a 
collapsed condition" (175). 

140. 1838; June, Scothmd. — "I was indeed discontented 
with myself, . . . and my stomach had struck work 
withal." "I find the air decidedly wholesome to me. 
I do my sleeping, my eating, my walking, am out all 
day in the open air; regard myself as put in hospital* 
decidedly on favorable terms, and am certain to improve 
daily" (177). 

J ^5^y J u b' 5- — "I reckon myself improving in health. 
. . . I sleep tolerably well always. ... I go five 
or six miles, striding along under the western twilight, 
and return home only because porridge ought not to be 
belated over much. I read considerably here, sit all day 
sometimes under the shelter of a comfortable hedge, 
pipe not far distant, and read" (178). 

141. 1S58, July 8. — ;i I am wae exceedingly, but not 
half so miserable as I have often been" (179). 

1858, July 9. To Mrs. Carlyle. — ''I lay awake all last 
night, and never had I such a series of hours filled al- 
together with you. ... I was asleep for some 
moments, but woke again; was out, was in the bathing 
tub. It was not until about five that I got into 'comatose 
oblivion.' rather than sleep, which ended again towards 
eight" (179). 

142. 1838, July 11. — "I knew not what has taken me; 
but ever since that sleepless night, though I am sleeping, 
etc., tolerably well again, there is nothing but wail and 
lamentation in the heart of all my thoughts. . . . 
And I can not divest myself of the most pusillanimous 
strain of humor" (180). 



EVIDENCE FROM THOMAS CARXYI.E 245 

In the same letter he continues most sad reflections, 
of which his biographer says: "All this was extremely 
morbid; but it was not an unnatural consequence of 
habitual want of self-restraint, coupled with tenderness 
of conscience when conscience was awake and could 
speak" (180). 

The question of clothes for the second German 
tour, and a leathern belt for riding, gave him 
much annoyance. 

"The clothes and belt question being disposed of, he 
grew better — slept better. The demons came less often. 
A German Life of Charles XII was a useful distraction" 

143. 1858, August 21. — Carlyle goes to Edin- 
burgh and his vacation ends (184). 

1858, August 24., Hamburg. — At eleven o'clock 
at night he begins writing a cheerful letter of 
three hundred and twenty-five words to his wife. 



1858, August 28. — "I felt unwell the day after writing 
to you. . . . Felt as if I were getting into a fever 
outright. . . . And there was no end to the talk I 
had to carry on. The Herr von Usedom is a fine, sub- 
stantial, intelligent, and good man. We really had a 
great deal of nice speech together, and did beautifully 
together; only that I was so weak and sickly" (187). 

144. 1858, September 14, Prag. — "From Breslau . . . 
our adventures have been miscellaneous, our course 
painful but successful. At Landshut, . . . where we 
arrived near eleven the first night, in a crazy vehicle of 
one horse, you never saw such a scene of squalid deso- 
lation. I had pleased myself with the thoughts of a cup 
of hot milk, such as is generally procurable in German 



246 knkrgy-divkrsion dyspepsia. 

inns. Umsonst! no milk in the house! no nothing! 
. . . I mostly missed sleep" (189). 

1858, September 75, Dresden. — " However, we are near 
the end of it. ... I am not hurt; I really do not 
think myself much hurt; but, oh, what a need of sleep, 
of silence, of a right good washing with soap and water 
all over ! " (191). 

145. 1858, September 22; back in London. — " Having 
finished his work in exactly a month. " Of this second 
German tour, the biographer says: "It was a journey ot 
business, and was executed w r ith a vigor and rapidity re- 
markable in so old a man. . . . How well his survey- 
ing work was done, the history of Frederick's campaigns, 
when he came to write them, were ample evidence. . . . 
He had mastered the details of every field which he vis- 
ited; not a turn of the ground, not a brook, not a wood, 
or spot where wood had been, had escaped him. Each 
picture was complete in itself, unconfused with any other; 
and, besides the picture, there was the character of the 
soil, the extent of cultivation — every particle of informa- 
tion which would help to elucidate the story." "There 
are no mistakes," continues the biographer, "military 
students in Germany are set to learn Frederick's battles 
in Carlyle's account of them — altogether an extraordinary 
feat on Carlyle's part, to have been accomplished in so 
short a time" (192). 

146. This must therefore have been an excess- 
ively busy month. And the above extract is 
strongly suggestive of overwork, and sufficiently 
accounts for any dyspepsia that may have at- 
tended him on this "quite frightful month of 
physical discomfort " and " great mischief to 
health, " and from which he returned "utterly 
broken and degraded " (194). 



EVIDENCE FROM THOMAS CARI^YLE. 247 

147. 1858, December 28. — The first two volumes of 
"Frederick" had been published to the extent of five 
thousand — a great success in the matter of sales. " I am 
fairly richer at this time than I ever was, in the money 
sense, rich enough for all practical purposes — otherwise 
no luck for me till I have done the final two volumes. 
Began that many weeks ago, but cannot get rightly into 
it yet, struggle as I may. Health unfavorable, horse ex- 
ercise defective. . . . Ah, me, would I were through 
it. I feel then as if sleep would fall upon me, perhaps 
the last and perfect sleep. I haggle and struggle here all 
day, ride then in the twilight like a haunted ghost, speak 
to nobody" (194). 

148. Of Carlyle's home the biographer says: i( Gener- 
ally the life was smooth and uneventful, but the atmos- 
phere was always dubious, and a disturbed sleep or an 
indigestion would bring on a thunder-storm. . . . 
Carlyle worked all day, rode late in the afternoon, came 
home, slept a little, then dined and went out afterwards 
to walk in the dark. If any of us were to spend the 
evening there, we generally found her alone; then he 
would come in, take possession of the conversation, and 
deliver himself in a stream of splendid monologue, wise, 
tender, scornful, humorous, as the inclination took him — 
but never bitter, never malignant, always genial, the 
fiercest denunciations ending in a burst of laughter at his 
own exaggerations. ... So passed the next two or 
three years; he toiling on unweariedly, dining nowhere, 
and refusing to be disturbed " (199). 

149. 1859, March 14. — (< We go along here in the com- 
mon way, or a little below it, neither of us specially de- 
finable as ill, but suffering (possibly from the muddy tor- 
pid weather) under unusual feeb leness, and wishing we 
were a little stronger. . . . As to me, the worst is a 
fatal inability to get forward with my work in this state of 
nerves and stomach. I am dark, inert, and stupid to a 



248 ENKRGY-DIYKRSION DYSPEPSIA. 

painful degree, when progress depends almost altogether 
on vivacity of nerves. . . . There is no remedy but 
boring along mole-like or mule-like, and refusing to lie 
down altogether " (199). 

150. i8jp. — A vacation of three months, tak- 
ing a house in Scotland, was not a great success 
in respect of health, either to Carlyle or his wife. 
It had been preceded by " months of uselessness 
and wretchedness/'' Mrs. Carlyle was evidently 
also disposed to indigestion and its dependent 
nervous ills, and it was mainly for her good that 
Carlyle, in August, i860, leaves home with his 
work for Thurso Castle (201). 

151. i860, August 6 y Thurso Castle. — Carlyle 
shirks church; walks along shore with book, 
some mile or two. Sits and saunters in. a way 
agreeable to himself. Reads, bathes* carefully, 
and sets out, vigorously walking, to arrive warm 
and also punctual. Slept capitally the first night 
and tolerably the second. 

" Nay, have got my affairs settled,^ so to speak; break- 
fast an hour before the family, am not to show face at all 
till three p. m., and mean actually to try some work. If 
I can it will be very fine for me " (201). 

i86o i August 14. — "Am called at eight, bathe as at 
home, run out from heat, breakfast privately, and by 
this means shirk ' prayers ' — am at work by ten, bathe at 
two, and do not show face till three,, after which comes 
walking, etc. ... I have got some work done every 
day; have slept every night, never quite ill, once or twice 
splendidly" (303). 



EVIDENCE FROM THOMAS CAREYI.E. 249 

i860, August 24, Thurso Castle. — " I sit boring over my 
work, not quite idle, but with little visible result." Talks 
of shortening his stay for that reason (203). 

152. i860, October 12, London, — "Carlyle was fixed to 
his garret room again, rarely stirring out except to ride, 
and dining nowhere save now and then with Foster, to 
meet only Dickens, who loved him with all his heart " 
(206). 

1867, March 27 \ — " Nothing but the old, silent struggle 
continually going on; for my very dreams, when I have 
any, are apt to be filled with it." A daily ride alone. 
Health better rather than worse (206). 

1 i But the labor was desperate, and told heavily on him 
and on his wife. When summer came she went for 
change to Folkestone." "Nothing is wrong about the 
house here," he wrote to her, " nor have I failed in sleep 
or had other misfortunes; nevertheless, I am dreadfully 
low-spirited, and feel like a child wishing mammy back. 
Perhaps, too, she is as well away for the moment. The 
truth is, I am under medical appliances, which renders 
me for this day the wretchedest nearly of all the sons of 
Adam not yet condemned, in fact, to the gallows. I have 
not spoken one word to anybody since you went away " 

(211). 

153. 7862. — "The third volume of ' Frederick y was 
finished and published this summer. The fourth volume 
was getting into type, and the fifth and last was partly 
written. The difficulties did not diminish" (213). 

"He rarely looked at reviews. He hardly ever read a 
newspaper of any kind. I do not remember that I ever 
saw one in his room " (213). 

"He had read more miscellaneously than any man I 
have ever known " (213). 

"If there be one thing," Carlyle said at the age of 
sixty-nine years, "for which I have no special talent, it is 
literature. If I had been taught to do the simplest useful: 



250 £nergy-divkrsion dyspkpsiA. 

thing, I should have been a better and happier man" 
(225). 

154. 1865. — "By August he was tired, ' Frederick ■ 
spinning out beyond expectation, and he and Mrs. Car- 
lyle went for a fortnight to the Grange. . . . The 
visit was a happy one " (229) 

In the autumn of 1863 the work of "Fred- 
erick" was found to have so expanded that 
another volume became necessary (231). 

7863, December 29. — Mrs. Carlyle is completely dis- 
abled by accident, thrown in the street by a cab. "In 
health I am myself as well as usual. I keep busy too in 
all available moments. Work done is the one consola- 
tion left me" (232). 

155. 1864, August 1. — "Worked too late yesterday. 
Walked out for exercise at seven p. m. . . . My 
walk was gloomy, sad as death. ... I read till mid- 
night, then out again, solitary as a ghost, and to bed 
about one, I see nobody" (235). 

1864, August 2. — "I am out of sorts; no work hardly; 
and am about as miserable as my worst enemy could 
wish" (235). 

1864, August j. — "I am better than yesterday, still not 
quite up to par" (236). 

156. 1864, August 6. To Froude, speaking of his 
wife's condition. — "God only knows what is to become of 
it all. But I keep as busy as the fates will allow, and in 
that find the summary of any consolation that remains to 
me. My progress is, as it has always been, frightfully 
slow; but, if I live a few months, I always think I shall 
get the accursed millstone honorably sawed from my 
neck, and once more revisit the daylight and dry land, 
and see better what steps are to be taken. I have no 
company here but my horse. Indeed I have mainly 



EVIDENCE FROM THOMAS CARI^YI^E. 25 1 

consorted with my horse for eight years back, etc." 
(236). 

157. 1864, August 17. — "One ought not to be so des- 
perate, but I was too early awake again, and flesh is 
weak" (237). 

1864, August 29 ', 30. — ' 'The blessed silence of Sabbath! 
Nobody loves his Sabbath as I do. There is something 
quite divine to me in that cessation of barrel organs, 
pianos, tumults and jumblings. I easily do a better 
day's work than on any other day of the seven." 
Written apparently at midnight 237). 

158. 1864, September 8, 9. To Ms wife. — "Your account 
would have made me quite glad again, had not my 
spirits been otherwise below par. Want of potatoes, 
want of regular bodily health, nay — it must be admitted 
— I am myself too irregular with no Goody near me. If 
I were but regular." Apparently written at midnight 

(238). 

1864, September 20. — "Of myself there is nothing to 
record, but a gallop of excellence yesterday, an evening 
to myself altogether, . . . and a walk under the 
shining skies between twelve and one A. m." (238). 

159. Late in September, 1864, Mrs. Carlyle 
returns to London after a six months' absence. 

"Frederick" was finished on a Sunday evening late in 
January, 1865, "the last of Carlyle's great works, the 
last and grandest of them. 'The dreary task, and the 
sorrows and obstructions attending it,' 'a magazine of 
despairs, impossibilities, and ghastly difficulties never 
known but to himself, and by himself never to be for- 
gotten,' all was over. . . . No sympathy could be 
found on earth for those horrid struggles of twelve years, 
nor happily was any needed' ' (240). 

"No critic, after the completion of Frederick,' chal- 



252 ENERGY-DIVERSION DYSPEPSIA. 

lenged Carlyle's right to a place beside the greatest of 
English authors, past or present' ' (242). 

160. 1865, Ju?ie 9, The Gill, Scotland. — "I finished 
last night the dullest thick book, long-winded, though 
intelligent, of Lyell" (244). 

"I am doing myself good in respect of health," he 
said, "though still in a tremulous state of nerves, and alto- 
gether somber and sad and vacant. My hand is given to 
shake" (246). 

In Scotland "he read his 'Boileau' lying on the grass, 
sauntered a minimum, rode a maximum, sometimes 
even began to think of work again, as if such idleness 
were disgraceful" (246). 

1865 and 1866. — "During the winter I saw much of him," 
says the biographer. c 'He was, for him, in good spirits, 
lighter-hearted than I had ever known him. He would 
even admit occasionally that he was moderately well in 
health" (253). 

161. 7866, March 29, 30. — " 'My first night,' he wrote of 
himself, i owing to railway and other noises, not to speak 
of excitations, talkings, dinnerings, was totally sleepless; 
a night of wandering, starting to vain tobacco and utter 
misery, thought of flying off next morning to Auchter- 
tool for quiet.' Morning light and reflection restored 
some degree of composure. He was allowed to break- 
fast alone — Tyndall took him out for a long, brisk ride. 
He dined again alone, threw himself on a sofa, and by 
Heaven's blessing, had an hour and a half of real sleep. 
In his bed he slept again for seven or eight hours, and 
on the Saturday on which he was to proceed found him- 
self 'a new man.' " 

"The traveling was disagreeable, Carlyle reached 
Edinburgh in the evening, 'the forlornest of all physical 
wretches.' There too the first night was 'hideous.' . . 
. He collected himself, slept well the Sunday night, 
and on the Monday was ready for action" (257). 



EVIDENCE FROM THOMAS CARLYLE. 253 

162. 1866, April 79, Aniiandale. — "I am very well in 
health here, sleep better than for a month past, in spite 
of the confusion and imperfect arrangements. The rides 
do me good" (263). 

Mrs. Carlyle died Saturday, April 21, 1866. 

163. 1866, August 75, Ripple Court — ' 'Hitherto, ex- 
cept a very long sleep, not of the healthiest, last night, 
almost all has gone rather awn- with me," 

Next day, same place. — ''Had a beautiful ride yester- 
day, a tolerable bathe, plenty of walking, driving, etc., 
and imagined I was considerably improving myself; but, 
alas! in the evening came the G's, and a dinner amount- 
ing to total wreck of sleep for me. Got up at three a. ml, 
sat reading till six, and except a ride, good enough in 
itself, but far from 'pleasant' in my state of nerves and 
heart, have had a day of desolate misery, the harder to 
bear as it is useless too, and results from a visit which I 
could have avoided had I been skilful" (278). 

164. 1 86 j, January 20, Mentone. — "In the evening we 
dined with Lady Marian Afford." He was pleased with 
the company and the dinner, and does not mention any 
bad results. "Everyone feels well on first reaching the 
Riviera. Carlyle slept soundly, discovered 'real im- 
provement' in himself." He continues to work, how- 
ever, and at Mentone finishes reminiscences of Edward 
Irving and of Jeffrey. "Doing anything not wicked is 
better than doing nothing, " he said (284, 285). 

165. 7867, January 27, Mentone. — "Walked two or three 
miles yesterday up the silent valley." 

Two days later. — Now four weeks at Mentone. Physic- 
ally and in the matter of sleep, he feels "as if rather 
better than at Chelsea; certainly not worse" (286). 

" His own spirits varied; declining slightly as the nov- 
elty of the scene wore off" (287). 



254 ENKRGY-DIVERSION DYSPEPSIA. 

"I seem to be doing rather well here, seem to have 
escaped a most hideous winter for one thing " (288). 

1867, March 8, Mentone. Aged 72. — "Health very 
bad, cough, et cetera, but principally indigestion — can 
have no real improvement till I see Chelsea again. . . . 
I am very sad and weak, but not discontented or indig- 
nant, as sometimes' ' (289). Returns to London second 
week of March. 

166. 1867, April 4. — "Idle! idle! My employments 
mere trifles of business. . . . Perhaps my health is 
slightly mending; don't certainly know" (292). 

1867 1 April 24. — The first complaint of illness for twenty 
days: "Idle, sick, companionless; my heart is very heavy, 
as \ifull and no outlet appointed. Trial for employment 
continues, and shall continue; but as yet in vain " (293). 

167. 7867, latter part of.— il K stereotyped edition of 
the ' Collected Works ' was now to be issued, and, con- 
scientious as ever, Carlyle set himself to revise and cor- 
rect the whole series. He took to riding again" (300). 

" He worked hard on the * revising' business" (301). 
"My state of health is very miserable, though I still 
sometimes think it fundamentally improving. Such a 
total wreck had that 'Frederick' reduced me to" (302). 

168. 7867, October 1, Aged 72. — "Inconceivable are 
the mean miseries I am in just now, about getting new 
clothes — almost a surgical question with me latterly — 
about fitting this, contriving that; about paltry bothera- 
tions with which I am unacquainted" (302). 

1867, October 8 '. Aged 72. — " Infirmities of age crowd 
upon me. I am grown and growing very weak,, as is 
natural at these years." 

7867, October jo. — "Utterly weak health I suppose has 
much to do with it. Strength quite a stranger to me; 
digestion, etc., totally ruined, though nothing specific to 
complain of as dangerous or the like — and probably am 
too old to recover. Life is verily a weariness on these 



KVIDKNCK FROM THOMAS CARI,YI<E. 255 

terms. Oftenest I feel willing to go, were my time 
come" (303). 

169. 1867, November 15. — "Went to Belton Saturday; 
gone a week. Returned Saturday last, and have been 
slowly recovering myself ever since from that * week of 
country air' and other salubrity. Nothing could excel 
the kindness of my reception, the nobleness of my treat- 
ment throughout. . . . But it would not do. I, in 
brief, could not sleep, and oftenest was in secret su- 
premely sad and miserable among the bright things go- 
ing on. Conclude I am not fit any longer for visiting in 
great houses. The futile valetting — intrusive and hinder- 
some, nine-tenths of it, rather than helpful — the dressing, 
stripping and again dressing, the]' witty talk ' — ach Gott! 
— especially, as crown and summary of all, the dining at 
8-9 P. M., all this is fairly unmanageable by me " (303). 

170. "On visiting the birthplace of Sir Isaac Newton 
he wrote : * Newton, who was once my grandest of mor- 
tals, has sunk to a small bulk and character with me 
now; how sunk and dwindled since in 1815, . # . when 
I sate nightly at Annan, invincibly tearing my way through 
that old Principia, often up till 3 A. m., without outlook or 
wish almost, except to master //, the loneliest and among 
the most triumphant of all young men ' " (304). 

At the time referred to here, 1 815, Carlyle 
was 20 years of age. We see, then, how early 
in life he committed the errors which during all 
his life were the causes of his indigestion and in- 
somnia — overtime work and night work. 

171. 1867, November 30. — He remembers that 
thirty-six or thirty-seven years ago at Craigen- 
puttock, on summer mornings after breakfast, 
Mrs. Carlyle used very often to come up to the 



256 EN£RGY-DIV£RSION DYSPEPSIA. 

little dressing-room where he was shaving, and 
seat herself on a chair behind him, for the privi- 
lege of a little further talk while this went on. 
" Instantly on finishing, I took to my work, and 
probably we did not meet much again till din- 
ner." This means talk with breakfast, talk with 
shaving, and work, in immediate succession, on 
the summer mornings referred to (305). 

172. For some years it was the custom of the 
Carlyles, that after dinner, evenings, he would 
lie on the sofa, she would play the piano. He 
felt like sleeping, and was inclined to sleep then, 
but sleep was not good for him directly after 
dinner. This shows that sleep was practicable 

(308). 

173. 1868. Aged 73. — "Occasionally at longish intervals 
he allowed himself to be tempted into London society. 
. . . He went one evening to the Dean of Westmin- 
ster' s." Of which he recorded: " Dinner, evening gen- 
erally, was miserable, futile, and cost me silent insomnia 
the w 7 hole night through. Deserved it, did I? It was 
not of my choosing— not quite " (311). 

174. 7868, February 6. — "Nothing yet done, as usual. 
Nothing. Oh, memiserum! Day, and days past, unus- 
ually fine. Health, in spite of sleeplessness, by no means 
very bad " (312). At the age of 73, Carlyle still rides in 
a gallop (314). 

7868, April 27. — "To me his talk had one great prop- 
erty, it saved all task of talking on my part. . . . And 
we did very well together." Referring to Rev. Lord 
Sydney, whom he met on his visit to Stratton, where, 
"except that as usual he slept badly, he enjoyed him- 
self" (313)- 



EVIDENCE FROM THOMAS CAKXYLE. 257 

"Proof-sheets of the new edition of his works were 
waiting for him on his return home. He ' found himself 
willing to read these books and follow the printer through 
them, as almost the one thing he was good for in his 
down-pressed and desolate years ' " (314). 

175. 1868 > September 8, Scotland. — u I was never so idle 
in my life before." 

"On getting back to London he worked in earnest 
sorting and annotating his wife's letters" (322). Occa- 
sional rides " formed his chief afternoon occupation; but 
age was telling on his seat and hand, and Comet and 
Carlyle's riding were both near their end." 

Early in October, 1868, Comet falls with Carlyle; and 
with this accident, from which he narrowly escaped un- 
injured, his riding ceased. " The marvel was that he 
was able to continue riding to so advanced an age, and 
had not met long before with a more serious accident. 
He rode loosely always His mind was always abstracted. 
He had been fortunate in his different horses. They had 
been ' very clever creatures/ This was his only explana- 
tion" (323). 

176. 1869. — " In the spring he was troubled by want of 
sleep again; the restlessness being no doubt aggravated 
by the l Letters,' and by the recollections which they 
called up." 

"The * Letters,' . . . and his own occupation with 
them, were the absorbing interest." 

1869, April 29. — " Perhaps this mournful, but pious, and 
ever interesting task, escorted by such miseries, night 
after night, and month after month — perhaps all this may 
be wholesome punishment, purification, and monition, 
and again a blessing in disguise. I have had many such 
in my life" (324). 

i86<p y July 2/f. — Seems to have worked at the 

"Letters" and had unsatisfactory assistants with 

17 



258 KNKRGY-DIVKRSION DYSPEPSIA. 

such work since preceding October (nine 
months). "In fact, this has been to me a heavy- 
laden miserable time" (325). 

177. 1869, September 28. — "The old story. Addiscombe 
and Chelsea alternating, without any result at all but 
idle misery and want of sleep, risen lately to almost the 
intolerable pitch. Dreary boring beings in the lady's 
time used to infest the place and scare me home again. 
Place empty, lady gone to the Highlands, and, still 
bountifully pressing, we tried it lately by removing bod- 
ily thither. Try it for three weeks said we, and did. 
Nothing but insomnia there, alas! . . . We struck 
flag again and removed all home. Enterprise to me a 
total failure. . . • The task in a sort done, Mary 
finishing my notes of 1866 this very day; I shirking for 
weeks past from any revisal or interference there as a 
thing evidently hurtful, evidently antisomnial even, in 
my present state of nerves. Essentially, however, her 
'Letters and Memorials' are saved, thank God." We 
means himself, brother and niece (325). 

''This is the last mention of those 'Letters,' etc., in the 
journal. " And Carlyle was never abk to revise further 
or to write an introduction to them (326) 

178. i86p y October 6. Aged 74. — "For a week past I 
am sleeping better, which is a special mercy of heaven. 
I dare not yet believe that sleep is regularly coming back 
to me; but only tremulously hope so now and then. If 
it does, I might still write something. My poor intellect 
seems all here, only crushed down under a general 
avalanche of things foreign to it. . . . Am reading 
Verstigan's 'Decayed Intelligence' night after night" 
(326, 327). 

1869, October 14. — "Three nights ago, stepping out at 
midnight, with my final pipe, and looking up into the 
stars, which were clear and numerous, it struck me with 



KVIDKNCK FROM THOMAS CAEXYI^K. 259 

a strange new kind of feeling. Hah! in a little while I 
shall have seen you also for the last time." And 
busies himself at that time of night with profound think- 
ing just before going to bed (327). 

179. Early in 1870 Carlyle became gradually incapable 
of using bis right hand for writing. "And no misfortune 
more serious could have befallen him, for 'it came/ he 
said, 'as a sentence not to do any more work while thou 
livest' — a very hard one, for he had felt a return of his 
energy" (332) 

His energy after this was used less for work 
and more for digestion, and to this alleged mis- 
fortune was due his better health during the last 
ten years of his life. 

He refers to his stay in Scotland this year, 1870, as 
"evidently doing me day by day some little good; though 
I have sad fighting with the quasi-infernal ingredient — 
the railway whistle, namely — and have my difficulties 
and dodgings to obtain enough sleep" (339). 

180. 1870, November 12. — "Poor Mary and I have had 
a terrible ten days. ... It concerned only that pro- 
jected letter to the newspapers about Germany. With a 
right hand valid and nerves in order I might have done 
the letter in a day" (344). 

This "long letter to the Times" made the real 
causes of the Franco- German trouble intelligible 
to the English (343). 

181. 1872, July 12. — "Item, generally if attainable, two 
hours (after 10:30 p. m.) of reading in some really good 
book — Shakespeare latterly — which amidst the silence of 
all the universe is a useful and purifying kind of thing" 
(357). 



260 ENERGY-DIVERSION DYSPEPSIA. 

i8yj y December 6. — His last legible journal 
entry: "For many months past, except for idle 
reading, I am pitifully idle." This he regrets. 
Ideas, thoughts, still occur, which he would like 
to write, but is unable. Dictation does not suc- 
ceed, "because a person stands between him and 
his thoughts" (362). 

182. 1875, January 30. — "I have not been worse since 
you last heard; in fact, usually rather better; and at times 
there come glimpses or bright reminiscences of what I 
might, in the language of flattery, call health very singu- 
lar to me now, wearing out my eightieth year" (370). 

"His time was chiefly passed in reading and in dicta- 
ting letters. He was still ready with his advice to all 
who asked for it, and with help when help was needed. 
He walked in the mornings on the Chelsea Embank- 
ment. ... In the afternoon he walked in the park 
with me or some other friend; ending generally in an 
omnibus, for his strength was visibly failing" (272). 

183. In Carlyle's eighty-first year he still pro- 
duces letters replying to young men, etc., about 
choice of professions — one letter, for example, 
of four hundred and fifty words (373). 

"Thus calmly and usefully Carlyle's later years went 
by. There was nothing more to disturb him. His 
health (though he would seldom allow it) was good. 
He complained of little, scarcely of want of sleep, and 
suffered less in all ways than when his temperament was 
more impetuously sensitive" (374). 

1876, May 5. — ''After much urgency and with a dead- 
lift effort, I have this day got issued through the Times 



EVIDENCE FROM THOMAS CARLYLE. 26 1 

a small indispensable deliverance on the Turk and Dizzy 
question" (380). 

184. "When the shock of his grief had worn off and he 
had completed his expiatory memoir, he became more 
composed, and could discourse with his old fulness, and 
more calmly than in earlier times. A few hours alone 
with him furnished them the most delightful entertain- 
ment. We walked five or six miles a day. ... As 
his strength declined, we used the help of an- omnibus, 
and extended our excursions farther. In his last years 
he drove daily in a fly. . . . He was impervious to 
weather — never carried an umbrella, but, with a mackin- 
tosh and his broad-brimmed hat, let the rain do its worst 
upon him" (380). 

Carlyle "always craved for fresh air" and so 
seated himself in conveyances as to get it if pos- 
sible (381). 

185. "The loss of the use of his right hand was more 
than a common misfortune. It was the loss of every- 
thing. The power of writing, even with the pencil, went 
finally seven years before his death. His mind was vig- 
orous and restless as ever. Reading without an object 
was weariness. Idleness was misery; and I never knew 
him so depressed as when the fatal certainty was brought 
home to him" (387). 

"His correspondence with his brother John, never in- 
termitted while they both lived, was concerned chiefly 
with the books with which he was occupying himself. 
He read Shakespeare again. He read Goethe again, 
and then went completely through the 'Decline and 
Fall.' " 

186. "I have finished Gibbon, " he wrote, "with a great 
deduction from the high esteem I have had of him ever 
since the old Kirkcaldy days, when I first read the twelve 



262 KNKRGY-DIVKRSION DYSPEPSIA. 

volumes of poor Irving's copy in twelve consecutive 
days" (395). 

"I do not feel to ail anything/' he said of himself, No- 
vember 2, 1878, "except unspeakable and, I think, 
increasing weakness. ... I am grateful to heaven 
for one thing, that the state of my mind continues unal- 
tered and perfectly clear. . . . He continued to read 
the Bible. . . . The Bible and Shakespeare remained 
'the best books' to him that were ever written." 

187. "He was growing weaker and weaker, and the 
exertion of thought exhausted him" (396). 

i8/8 y December 14, Aged 83. — "On coming down 
stairs from a dim and painful night I find your punctual 
letter here. . . . The night before last was unusually 
good with me. All the rest, especially last night, were 
worse than usual, and little or no sleep attainable by 
me. " Not of dyspepsia, nor of insomnia, Thomas Carlyle 
died on February 5, 1881, at the age of eight-five years. 

ON THE MANNER OF CONDUCTING CASES. 

I. Of the morbid nervous phenomena and 
other ills that are dependent on indigestion from 
any cause, enough has been said in my first 
essay; and, though equally applicable here, it is 
not necessary to repeat. 

It is common for the energy-diversion dys- 
peptic to become nearly or quite well during the 
latter years of his life. This fact Foster in his 
"Text-book of Physiology" (1878), page 563, 
offers to explain as follows: — 

"The epithelial glandular elements seem to be those 
whose powers are the longest preserved, and hence the 



ON THK MANNER OF CONDUCTING CASKS. 263 

man who in the prime of his manhood was a 'martyr to 
dyspepsia' by reason of the sensitiveness of his gastric 
nerves and the reflex inhibitory and other results of their 
irritation, in his later years, when his nerves are blunted, 
and when therefore his peptic cells are able to pursue 
their chemical work undisturbed by extrinsic nervous 
worries, eats and drinks with the courage and success of 
a boy." 

Foster testifies to the general fact of energy- 
diversion dyspepsia declining to almost or quite 
nothing during the later years of life. But it 
must be evident to the reader that his explana- 
tion of such decline is not to be taken more 
seriously than as an example which shows how 
very far from the truth are the prevailing expla- 
nations of dyspepsia; which again will account 
for the prevailing methods of practice being so 
very far from successful in curing dyspeptics. 

When an energy-diversion dyspeptic retires 
from work on account of the disability of old 
age, it is plain that he quits the errors that have 
all along been identified with his method of 
working, and of course he recovers his health as 
certainly as if the quitting of the errors had been 
due to a physician's direction. 

During the last nine years of his life, Carlyle 
was unable to write on account of partial paral- 
ysis (''writer's cramp 75 ) of his right hand. His 
health was so much the better for this alleged 
misfortune. He still suffered from insomnia be- 



264 ENKRGY-DIVKRSION DYSPEPSIA. 

cause he spent a large share of the night read- 
ing. Darwin's digestion also very much im- 
proved late in life, but he remained a sufferer 
from some life-long defect of the heart, which 
grew worse and finally took him off. 

2. The energy-diversion dyspeptic gets well in 
old age when he retires from work, and there- 
fore from the errors associated with his work; 
just as he gets well at any other time of life 
when he quits his work and takes a real vaca- 
tion, and remains well as long as he remains 
away from his errors. How promptly the errors 
are followed by illness, how certainly the illness 
compels cessation from work, and how promptly 
the enforced rest restores health, are often shown 
in the cases of Darwin and Carlyle, and are 
shown with especial clearness in the extracts 
following:— 

1864, August J. — "Worked too late yesterday. 
Walked out for exercise at seven p. m. . . . . My 
walk was gloomy, sad as death. ... I read till mid- 
night, then out again, solitary as a ghost, and to bed at 
one. I see nobody." 

August 2. — "I am out of sorts; no work hardly; and am 
about as miserable as my worst enemy could wish." 

August 3. — "I am better than yesterday, still not quite 
up to par." 

"My little ten-day tour," said Darwin, f 'October 8, 
1845, made me feel wonderfully strong at the time, but the 
good effects did not last." 

Such experiences certainly prove the value of 



ON THE MANNER OF CONDUCTING CASES. 265 

rests as every-day affairs, and the wisdom of the 
one day in seven as a whole day of rest. "When 
these brain workers neglect the little daily rests, 
and, like Darwin and Carlyle, take theirs in 
wholesale lots after some months, or one or 
more years, they certainly suffer no light penal- 
ties for such erroneous ways of resting. And 
where in such cases there is no actual illness 
present, serious bodily defects become painfully 
obvious along towards middle life, if not very 
much sooner. A little, thin, shriveled, over- 
sensitive woman, not likely to be chosen for any 
part in the perpetuation of the race; but she was 
the most distinguished member of her class at 
college! 

Not only during old age are spontaneous 
recoveries likely to take place, but they are 
common at all times of life. And, when the 
circumstances are noted, such recoveries can 
easily be accounted for. A thin student at 
college, working forenoons, afternoons and late 
evenings, seven days in the week, no recreation 
nor vacation, is extremely likely to be sooner or 
later a dyspeptic of the energy-diversion sort, 
and will remain so w T hile his manner of working 
remains so. But with the end of this way of 
working comes the end of his dyspepsia, a spon- 
taneous recovery. 

A schoolgirl of thirteen years was thin, 



266 KNKRGY-DIVKRSION DYSPKP3IA. 

dyspeptic, and displayed much anxiety about 
her school work. She often combined study 
with eating, and she often hurried to school 
immediately after the morning and noori meals. 
When the faults in the case became apparent, 
she was simply taken out of school to continue 
her studies, none the less, under a specially 
employed teacher at home. Anxiety about 
studies was discouraged, meals were taken in 
peace, and study was not resumed until an hour 
after meals. This girl got entirely well, and 
during the eighteen months immediately follow- 
ing this change she grew thirty pounds heavier. 

The utter absurdity of medicines in a case 
like this needs no mention. Cases like this have 
also been treated as though it were the study, 
or the confinement indoors, that was wrong. 
Study need not be stopped, even temporarily. 
It is only the circumstances that are wrong, 
partly at the home and partly at the school, and 
these can easily be righted. 

School children, thin ones especially, need to 
have their meals in peace, and should be re- 
strained from study, or any continued volitional 
mental effort, for at least thirty minutes after 
meals. They should rest one day in seven from 
continuous volitional mental effort. And if, 
owing to church or Sunday school attendance, 
or Sunday reading, this day's rest is not had on 



ON THE MANNER OF CONDUCTING CASES. 267 

Sunday, it should be regularly had on some 
other day. Rest of mind is referred to. In re- 
gard to rest of body, let each one be left to his 
own inclinations. It is only extraordinary phys- 
ical effort that will cause diversion of the energy 
of digestion. 

It may not be at all necessary to restrain any 
child, not even the most intellectual; perhaps it 
is only less urging and less encourging that is in 
many cases needed. When I lately heard a public- 
school-teacher lauded because "her classes made 
as good a showing of progress as any in the 
county," I simply remarked that I would be 
afraid to send my children to that teacher. 

3. When by a process of questioning it is 
found that diversion of energy is the cause of 
the dyspepsia in a case that presents itself for 
treatment, the proper course to pursue will con- 
sist in instructing the patient in such a way as 
to clearly point out the errors that he has been 
committing, and the reasons why they ai'e errors; 
and how it is that these errors cause the indiges- 
tion of the case. 

This instruction, which will consist of teach- 
ing as distinguished from merely telling, when 
put to practical use by the patient, will result in 
his taking his meals in peace, under circumstances 
that will excuse him from talking and listening 
at meals; and he will accordingly neither talk 



268 ENERGY-DIVERSION DYSPEPSIA. 

nor pay direct attention to the talk of others at 
meal times. Both talking and listening are done 
at the expense of energy that is required for 
digestion in this class of cases. The same peace 
and quiet of mind must be maintained for at 
least one hour after eating. And, in some cases 
where the resulting prostration is extreme, the 
patient should eat alone and be free from any 
stimulus to voluntary mental activity for at least 
two hours after eating. If he can eat but little 
at a time, and is for that reason to eat oftener 
than three times a day, he must not during 
treatment be engaged in any voluntary mental 
occupation whatever. The automatic thinking 
may be let alone, as it costs very little energy, 
and is at any rate not amenable to any useful 
control. 

The patient must be so placed that the main- 
tenance of these conditions will be practicable. 
He may need to be taken and kept away from 
his usual surroundings and associates for such 
a length of time aj may be necessary for his re- 
form, and to be convinced of the merits of such 
reform, and to regain some of his lost flesh. 
Returning home in a few weeks, resuming his 
work, gauging his hours and efforts to his 
energies, he will continue to improve physically, 
and continue to understand more and more of 
the advantages of the new way. One may easily 



OX THE MANNER OF CONDUCTING CASKS. 269 

fail to cure such a case if the instruction falls 
short of personal direction, encouragement and 
restraint. 

A patient of this kind is of course supposed to 
suspend work during the conduct of his case, 
but that is not necessary in every instance. To 
remain at his regular occupation is a great dis- 
advantage, and has the effect of making recupera- 
tion much slower, but it will be none the less 
complete and lasting. 

It happens rather frequently that a patient, 
earnestly wishing to get well, is hindered by 
infavorable circumstances which he can not 
easily control. His position, occupation or 
business, may entail overtime work, circum- 
stances may prevent him having his meals in 
peace, or may prevent him having sufficient rest 
afterwards. A dyspeptic so situated may, how- 
ever, get his instructions, reform as far as he 
can at the time, and complete his reforms at 
such future time as circumstances will permit. 

What is said in my first essay, relative to in- 
structing a patient at his home, or taking him 
away for better control, applies to cases of 
energy- diversion dyspepsia as well as to other 
cases. 

4. It is to be remembered that, when diversion 
of energy is alone the cause of indigestion, the 
diet of the patient is not to be concerned in the 



270 ENERGY-DIVERSION DYSPEPSIA. 

treatment of the case. But it generally happens 
that one does not long suffer from energy- 
diversion dyspepsia before he is led by erroneous 
ideas, or erroneous treatment, 'into additional 
errors. Dyspepsia beginning with energy-diver- 
sion as the cause, the patient is erroneously led 
to regard the commoner items of food as, in his 
case, more or less indigestible. He is led to 
take exceptions to the intuitively correct, but 
thoughtless, way of living, of the thoughtless 
class of people; and, in respect of methods of 
subsistence, he departs from the ways of his 
ancestry and kin, and sets out to improve upon 
them, and comes to additional grief. The energy- 
diversion dyspeptic next falls into the errors of 
monotonous repetition of such things as seem to 
him, and are alleged to be, easier of digestion. 
A paroxysm of illness comes upon him. He is 
forced to stop work, and temporarily suspends 
eating; then, of course, rapidly improves. On 
the resumption of eating he tries a diet recom- 
mended for its easy digestibility. As he has not 
yet resumed work, his energies are free and 
available for digestion. As the trial diet is new 
to him, is a change, it works perfectly well, and 
for that reason is at once adopted for regular 
use. The patient continues this new diet, and 
does very well for a few weeks possibly. The 
stomach will soon be tired of the monotonous 



ON THK MANNER OF CONDUCTING CASKS. 27 1 

repetition, and to the illness from energy-diversion 
is added the illness from the too long continued 
monotonous repetition. 

It is so common for the energy-diversion dys- 
peptic to fall into the additional errors of monot- 
onous dieting, that his instruction would be in- 
complete and insufficient for practical purposes 
if it did not include the matter of my first essay. 



III.— STALE-FOOD DYSPEPSIA. 

ON THE CAUSES. 

I. There is not a shovelful of soil on the sur- 
face of the earth but contains vital spores, germs 
or seeds, ready to develop their respective forms, 
and reproduce and multiply their kinds, under 
favorable conditions of moisture and heat. 

There is not an ounce of food but, by brief ex- 
posure to the air of any human habitation, will 
become infected with vital spores or germs, which 
will develop their respective forms, and vastly 
multiply their kinds, under favorable conditions 
of heat and moisture, and at the expense of the 
material which they infect. 

On the dry and less perishable foods, the 
microbe may simply find an abiding-place, with- 
out conditions favorable to its multiplication at 
the material's expense. On the more perishable 
foods exposed to air, moisture, and heat, the 
microbe soon lays hold, and the food is de- 
stroyed by changes which are familiar to us as 
spontaneous animal and vegetable decomposi- 
tions. 

Microbian life disorganizes animal and vege- 
( 272 ) 



ON THK CAUSES. 273 

table structures whenever and wherever condi- 
tions are favorable, but it also reorganizes them. 
Two classes of structures result. The one class 
is on a higher scale of organization, the other is 
on a lower scale than the original structure. 
The resulting structures of the higher scale are 
higher by virtue of being endowed with vitality. 
They constitute the microbian organisms that 
have been built up out of the original structure 
by the agency of life. The resulting structures 
of the lower scale of organization are called the 
" by-products of microbian multiplication." 

2. We should observe that food materials are of 
two classes: Amyloids and albuminoids. Amy- 
loids are composed of carbon, hydrogen, and ox- 
ygen, and embrace starch, sugars, dextrine, nat- 
ural gums and fats. Albuminoids, in addition to 
carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, contain also ni- 
trogen, and a little sulphur and phosphorus. The 
more perishable constituents of animal and vege- 
table structures are albuminoids. Another way 
of distinguishing the two classes of food mate- 
rials is to speak of the albuminoids as the nitrog- 
enous, and of the amyloids as the non -nitroge- 
nous, structures. 

The amyloids, or non-nitrogenous structures, 
" are comparatively stable, and do not spontane- 
ously decompose ;" but albuminoids, or nitrog- 
enous structures, " not only decompose sponta- 
18 



274 STALE-FOOD DYSPEPSIA. 

neously themselves, but drag down the amyloids, 
with which they are associated, into concurrent 
decomposition — not only change themselves, but 
propagate a change into amyloids." 

The first stage of the spontaneous decomposi- 
tion of any particular material, of either class 
mentioned, means its recomposition, mainly into 
a more complex structure, endowed with vitality, 
and secondarily into a more simple structure, 
which is called the by-product. If the retrograde 
change continues, the decomposing material is 
ultimately reduced to the mineral elements from 
which it was built up by vital agencies. These 
ultimate mineral elements are called the end- 
products of decomposition. The microbian life 
itself, and its by-products, are incidental or transi- 
tional products, occurring in the course of changes 
that finally terminate with the end-products. 

In the consideration of stale foods as causes of 
illness, we are chiefly concerned with the by- 
products of the spontaneous decomposition of 
the nitrogenous or albuminoid food materials. 

3. The illnesses considered in this essay will 
be held to be due primarily to the infection of 
foods by microbian life, and the circumstance 
that under some conditions the gastric juice fails 
to sterilize foods thus infected; and secondarily 
to " the accumulation in the blood (or on the 
mucous surfaces, to be absorbed into the blood) 



ON TH£ CAUSES. 275 

of poisonous chemical substances, by-products 
of microbian multiplication.'' 

" These by-products of albuminoid fermenta- 
tion (for there are many kinds) have now been 
isolated from their microbian culture fluids, and 
analyzed. They may be regarded as alkaloids 
of albuminoid decompositions, and are called pto- 
mains. They are, most of them, deadly poisons. 
Septic poison, which is the by-product of putre- 
factive fermentation, that is, of the multiplication 
of putrefactive bacillus, is the most familiar ex- 
ample." 

" Every form of fermentation has its peculiar 
chemical by-product, and many of these are poi- 
sonous. The different kinds of alcohol, ethylic, 
amylic, etc., and different kinds of organic acids, 
such as lactic, acetic, butyric, etc., are familiar 
examples."* 

4. As a rule, every meal that is swallowed is 
infected with the germs of microbian life. No 
harm, however, can result from that circumstance 
alone. But when we swallow foods in which de- 
composing changes have already made more or 
less progress, we take in large colonies of mi- 
crobes. And along with them we also take in 
the concomitant and often dangerously poisonous 
by-products. When such foods are sterilized just 

* Prof. Joseph Le Conte, in Pacific Medical Journal, 
September, 1889. 



276 STAI.3-FOOD DYSPEPSIA. 

before ingestion, the microbian life will be de- 
stroyed by the heat, but its by-products will be- 
come none the less dangerous. In cities, even 
under the most favorable circumstances, there 
must always be some doubt about the condition 
of milk that comes from the country during 
warm weather. And under ordinary circum- 
stances there can be no doubt that the milk is in 
a decomposing condition when delivered to the 
consumer. At the time of making butter, by the 
small scale method mostly used, the milk or 
cream from which it is separated is already old 
and in a decomposing condition. Of the very 
best creamery butter, made on the large scale, 
the curd remaining in it constitutes at least one 
per cent. Let a pound of butter be put into a 
vessel suitable for observation, the vessel then 
immersed in hot water; when the butter has 
melted, the cloud-like masses of decomposing 
curd may be observed. 

Butter is mfected food. When it has also be- 
come stale, and the odor of butyric acid proves 
that the butter is itself decomposing, it may no 
longer appear on the dining-room table, but it is 
nevertheless used in the kitchen. It is then 
called cooking butter. If the boarder does not 
put it on his bread, he will get it nevertheless in 
his mashed potatoes, in his gravies from the fry- 
ing-pan or from the roasting-pan, or in the hard 



ON THE CAUSES. 277 

sauce for his pudding, or in fancy pastries. Even 
though cooking of the rancid butter also cooks the 
microbe, and renders it innocuous, we are not so 
positive about its effect on the poisonous butyric 
acid and other by-products, At any rate, I have 
observed persons whose digestion was perfectly 
good at their own homes, but while boarding at 
restaurants during absence of their families they 
suffered from indigestion under circumstances 
which indicated that it was with the fats used in 
cooking that the cause of their suffering lay. 

5. Bread is generally moist; it presents a com- 
paratively large amount of surface to the air, es- 
pecially the cut surface, and if it becomes twelve 
hours old, more or less, during warm weather, 
or in a warm place during cold weather, it can, 
on a sufficiently minute examination, be observed 
to be infected with fungus. It is then stale 
bread. It can be disinfected by toasting. A 
good way is to slice it and put it in the oven 
awhile before using. If no harm results from 
eating stale bread, it is only because it goes into 
a vigorous stomach where there is a prompt and 
sufficient supply of the germicidal gastric juice 
for disinfection purposes. 

A sick person's stomach, however, is generally 
not to be relied on to do its own sterilizing or 
disinfection; hence the wisdom of toasting bread 
for sick folks, and the explanation of toast often 



278, STAI^-FOOD DYSPEPSIA. 

agreeing better than simple bread. The use of 
bread in a stale condition is in conformity with a 
very erroneous custom that is extensively preva- 
lent, and is upheld by almost all physicians. 

Bread should as certainly be fresh as any other 
item of food. The dry, hard, unleavened varieties 
of bread, such as are used by soldiers on cam- 
paign duty, and by sailors at sea, are good so 
long as they are kept dry; but musty biscuits, 
we shall have cause to suspect, when diarrhea 
and dysentery are in the military camp, are not 
less disastrous than the powder and lead of the 
enemy. 

What is true of bread applies with more force 
to cakes. Pies and cakes that are fresh are safe. 
It is in the stale condition that rich pastry is 
chargeable with a great deal of indigestion, and 
only to that condition of it belongs the doubtful 
reputation that attaches to pastry in general. 

6. Ice cream is a safe luxury w r hen the cream 
of which it is made is fresh. Aside from any 
reference to the microbe, I would rather have my 
ice cream at the commencement of my dinner 
than at the end of it; because it is probable that 
so much as a dish, of anything so cold as ice 
cream is, would, in the stomach, cause at least a 
slight functional disturbance, which can be much 
more safely endured by a stomach that is com- 
paratively empty and inactive, than by a stomach 



ON THK CAUSKS. 279 

that is loaded and busy. And, incidentally, 
where there is some temptation to load the stom- 
ach heavily, ice cream at the conclusion of dinner 
is too much in the nature of "the last straw." 

7. In the matter of re-serving dishes, bringing 
to the table a second or third time the remnant 
of a dish that has already been served, the fault 
of monotonous repetition, and the sometimes 
evil results thereof, have been shown in my first 
essay. An additional fault of such repeating, in 
warm weather, lies in the fact that such foods so 
re-served are often stale, badly infected, and too 
ready to undergo decomposition, with too great 
danger that the microbian energy may exceed 
the gastric energy, and the rotting processes out- 
do the processes of digestion. 

When such remnants are thoroughly heated 
just before being served, the microbian life which 
they may contain will be destroyed; but such 
heating does not destroy the poisons that may 
have already been formed. It has often hap- 
pened, for example, that persons have suffered 
from eating of a remnant of chicken potpie re- 
served. 

It will generally be found that where the prac- 
tice of re-serving prevails among people of seden- 
tary habits in cities, there is room for improve- 
ment of the digestion of the individuals concerned. 

8. What has already been said of other things 



280 STALE-FOOD DYSPEPSIA. 

applies also to fruits; more particularly in cities, 
and among the less vigorous people. I have 
known 'paroxysms of indigestion to be caused 
by cherries that were stale. I have observed 
decidedly unpleasant results from eating water- 
melon in small quantities in the city, and I am 
sure that one may sit down in the patch where 
they grow and eat watermelons to the fullest 
limit of his capacity, and suffer no harm what- 
ever. If the watermelon is ripe when it leaves 
the country, it undergoes some process of change 
for the worse before it is consumed in the city. 
Most of our good ripe fruits are too perishable 
to endure their ordinary usage and remain in 
good condition for a day or two in the city dur- 
ing warm weather, not to mention, shipment to 
distant parts. 

Many persons in cities can not eat fruits with 
any freedom without suffering, so they allege. 
It remains in any particular case to observe 
under what circumstances such a person attempts 
to use fruit and what condition the fruit is in. 
To reduce fruit eating to the last degree of safety 
for those to whom it is unsafe, it should be 
eaten quite ripe and absolutely fresh, other- 
wise it shall have been just recently stewed or 
baked. Unfortunately for a large share of tinned 
fruit, and more so for the consumers of it, it 
does not go directly from the parent stem to the 
tin. 



ON THE) CAUSES. 28l 

9. Berries that are visibly moldy are ac- 
cepted by the canner and put up as pie fruit. 
Fruits that are badly spotted are received by the 
canner, the rotten parts cut away and the re- 
mainder put up as pie fruit Let a pie contain 
such fruit, and be twenty-four hours old, during 
warm weather, and no wonder it will give a bad 
reputation to pies in general, in the mind of the 
consumer whose stomach can distinguish matters 
of quality in foods. 

Sometimes, when the weather favors the 
simultaneous ripening of an unusually large 
amount of fruit, and also favors the simultaneous 
spoiling of it, it comes to the city in amounts 
that exceed the demands of the retailer. The 
canner then finds his opportunity and for his 
own price gets large amounts of fruit that have 
already been too long from the parent stem, 
considering the weather, and may yet deteriorate 
much more before being finally sterilized and 
sealed. The same remarks apply to inferior 
qualities of canned vegetables. There are also 
inferior qualities of canned fish. Sometimes the 
interval between catching and canning the fish 
may have been too long, or the weather may 
have been exceptionally warm and therefore 
unfavorable for the keeping of the catch until 
sealed up. 

10. And here it should be remembered that 



282 STALK-FOOD DYSPEPSIA. 

all animal foods, fats excepted, being composed 
of nitrogenous or albuminoid structures to a 
vastly greater proportionate extent than vege- 
table foods, become very much more dangerous to 
life when ingestedin an infectedcondition. This is 
because it is from albuminoid structures that the 
most dangerously poisonous by-products of 
decomposition are formed. While infected vege- 
table foods will perhaps cause illness as often as 
animal foods in the same condition, the latter are 
likely to prove fatally poisonous. There is no 
small amount of canned meat that is of inferior 
quality, and it has sometimes been found to be 
dangerous, not only making those who use it 
ill, but occasionally killing some one. 

When a single individual is made ill by poison- 
ous food, or is killed by it, the real cause is 
likely to be overlooked. It will simply be 
announced that he died of stomach trouble, and 
that his illness was very brief. When, however, 
a number of persons are made simultaneously 
ill, manifesting similar phenomena, one or two of 
them narrowly escaping death, the truth is 
developed. The "stomach trouble" of the lone 
case is on general principles conceded to be so 
mysterious that no one is expected to give any 
further explanation as to cause of death. 

II. From a contribution by Prof. Wm. H. 
Welch to the second volume of "An American 



ON TH£ CAUSES 283 

Text-book of the Theory and Practice of Medi- 
cine/'* page 38, I quote the following: — 

"Here may be mentioned the not uncommon instance 
of poisoning, often of a large number of people, from the 
ingestion of decomposing or altered fish, mussels, 
oysters, sausage, canned meats, ham, milk, cheese and 
ice cream. These are due to intoxication, and chiefly to 
the class of bacterial poisons called ptomains produced 
in the early stages of certain kinds of decomposition. 
In certain cases of poisoning with milk, cheese, and ice 
cream Vaughan has Remonstrated a toxic pcomain which 
he calls tyrotoxicon." 

The heating that is incidental to the canning 
of foods destroys the microbian life that infests 
them, but it does not destroy the poisonous by- 
products of any decomposition that may have 
been going on. Nor are these poisons rendered 
innocuous by a further cooking before reaching 
the table of the consumer. 

Even if it be rare that inferior qualities of 
canned fish and meat are dangerously poisonous, 
they are often at least slightly poisonous, and, 
being decomposed even to a very slight extent, 
they are the more ready to resume decomposi- 
tion when again exposed to the air after being 
opened, and the more ready to continue the rot- 
ting process even after reaching the stomach. 
Such inferior qualities of canned meat and fish 
are also especially dangerous during warm 

* By Dr. Wm. Pepper, Philadelphia, 1894. 



284 STAl^E-FOOD DYSPKPSIA. 

weather, if remnants of them are served a second 
or third time. 

12. Some species of microbian organisms do 
not require air for their existence and multiplica- 
tion. And this accounts for their action inside 
of a sealed tin of meat or fish which has been put 
up in a manner that must have been defective, 
especially in the detail of heating. Tins of food 
materials that have been defectively put up are 
not uncommon in the output of canneries. 
When the cases of tins reach the retail dealer, 
he recognizes the faulty tins by the convexity of 
their ends, which should be concave (tins of acid 
fruits excepted). The convexity, or bulging, of 
the ends of the can is due to the contained gases 
that are always being evolved during fermenta- 
tive changes. 

What becomes of these "swell heads," as they 
are called, is not easy to find out. They are a 
source of danger to the consumer. The retailer 
may sell them if he can, and he generally can. 
Or he may return them to the wholesaler, and 
even if the wholesaler returns them to the can- 
nery, it may, nevertheless, happen that they are 
bought up by unscrupulous speculators, who 
punch another little hole in the top of the can, 
press its convexity into concavity, solder up the 
little hole, and sell these tins of dangerous foods 
at a rate which alone is suspicous of something 
wrong. 



ON THE CAUSES. 285 

Every can of food will be observed to have 
one little hole punched in the top, which has been 
soldered up. The faulty cans that have been 
treated as I have described have two such sold- 
ered holes. But it is practicable to disguise such 
faulty cans completely, as the necessity of mak- 
ing a second hole may be avoided by reopening 
the first one, by melting the solder which closes 
it, and, after concaving, soldering it up again. 

13. It is during warm weather that we are 
most liable to the dangers that attend the use of 
stale foods. And in tropical climates these 
dangers present themselves whenever it is at- 
tempted to subsist after the manner prevailing in 
temperate climates. 

Dr. Andrew Duncan writes*: — 

"The affections included under the term 'bowel com- 
plaints' demand our attention with greater importunity 
in tropical campaigns than those of any other class. For, 
however healthy in other respects a campaign may be, 
we shall always meet with 'bowel complaints.' . . . 
In fact, the experience of all army surgeons has ever been 
in this direction." 

Of fourteen campaigns of as many wars con- 
ducted by the British, Dr. Duncan finds "bowel 
complaints'' to have headed the list of diseases 
in ten. 



*"The Prevention of Disease in Tropical Campaigns," 
by Andrew Duncan, M. D., etc., Surgeon Bengal Army. 



286 STAI.K-FOOD DYSPEPSIA. 

"Desgenettes states that a greater number of men died 
from dysentery between 1792 and 1815 in the French 
army, than fell in the great battles of the empire." 

Since the Napoleonic era, the sanitary circum- 
stances of the soldier, during times of peace and 
war, have been very much improved; but such 
improvement can yet be carried to a further at- 
tainable extent, which furthering is, in fact, the 
object of Dr. Duncan's valuable book. 

14. In the causation of bowel complaints 
among soldiers and camp followers there have 
been two factors — monotonous subsistence, and 
the general unfitness of stale or infected foods. 
Two examples of the operation of the twofold 
cause appear in the following extract from Dr. 
Duncan, page 125: — 

"The diet should be varied as much as possible. Men 
get sick of a constant monotonous diet, and moreover, 
digestion gets out of order, and in a condition predispos- 
ing to bowel complaints. The salt ration, if in excess, is 
one of the most, if not the most, predisposing causes for 
bowel complaints. Long-continued salt rations are ab- 
solutely certain to bring on these affections. 

"In the first Burmese war, 1824-6, for six and a half 
months the troops had salt rations shortly after its com- 
mencement, and forty-eight per cent perished within ten 
months, principally of scorbutic dysentery. 

"Here the cattle were in the first place marched to Cal- 
cutta from distant stations and slaughtered in February, 
1824, under a degree of heat so great that decomposition 
must have set in. It was then salted. 

' * Again, in the China war of 1840, notwithstanding this 



ON TH£ CAUSES. 287 

terrible precedent, Government had learnt nothing. Cat- 
tle were again marched to Calcutta and slaughtered in 
the heat of February, with the same consequences to the 
British troops. The meat was half putrid when the force 
sailed. In one regiment, the Twenty-sixth Cameronians, 
embarking nine hundred strong and full of health, the re- 
sult was, that at the end of two months there were not 
two hundred men left fit for duty in the field, owing to the 
havoc made by scorbutic dysentery, (Martin, Maclean.)' ' 

15. The following additional extract from Dun- 
can, pages 78 and 79, is for the purpose of showing 
that, in the conduct of wars, there are yet prevail- 
ing the disastrous errors of monotonous subsist- 
ence, and the dangerous errors of using "cheap 
and inferior supplies: — " 

"I may now sum up a few of -the results to be attained 
in campaigns in warm climates, where especially we have 
to guard against monotony of diet: — 

"1. Vary the food by different tinned meats from Aus- 
tralia, New Zealand, and America, but beware of cheap 
and inferior supplies. 

"2. Where possible, drive live cattle with the force in 
preference to carrying meat supplies. 

"3. Discard all compressed vegetables, using, where 
necessary, only preserved. 

"4. Requisition the invaded country for supplies. 

"5. Look out for the natural products of the country. 
Yams were obtained in Malay, melons, potatoes, and 
cucumbers in Afghanistan; wild cress, cabbage, and sow 
thistle in New Zealand; begonia and elephant apple in 
Aka. Fowls can be obtained also everywhere gen- 
erally. 

"6. Never give salted and preserved rations at a 



288 STALE-FOOD DYSPEPSIA. 

stretch. In Looshai, at first the European officers only 
got salted and preserved rations, and their health be- 
came seriously affected, whilst the preserved rations 
caused much palling of the appetite. As soon, however, 
as fresh provisions were brought up, the digestive disor- 
ders rapidly amended. The natural resources of Looshai 
were very poor, and sheep had accordingly to be contin- 
ually sent up to the troops. This campaign, Dr. Buckle 
emphatically stated, showed that the general health could 
not be maintained in the absence of fresh meat. 
Again, for men undergoing great exertion, never give 
only tinned meat for more than one day." 

According to British campaign experience, 
therefore, tinned foods, and foods otherwise pre- 
served, have a reputation that is not good, even 
if it is not decidedly bad. 

Again, on page 81, same work: — 

' 'The great rules in the field are: (i) To thoroughly 
cook all meat, and boil all fluids, such as milk or water, 
served out to the men; and (2) to reject all food sup- 
plies wherever there is a doubt of their being fresh." 

That this has not always been done is shown 
by Duncan in his chapter on bowel complaints. 

16. When water is contaminated with decom- 
posing animal remains, there can be no doubt at 
all that it contains the microbian life and the by- 
products w 7 hich the decomposing organic struc- 
tures furnish; and when such water is ingested 
it is at least very unhealthy, if not always very 
dangerous. 

It happens sometimes that small animals drop 



on the causes. 289 

into wells and remain there months, and even 
years, the water being in the meantime constantly 
used. Where the well is deep and the w r ater is 
cold the animal remains may undergo but slow 
change, mechanical dissolution rather than mi- 
crobial! decomposition, very unhealthy neverthe- 
less. 

In 1869, in a thickly-settled agricultural dis- 
trict, I witnessed a grasshopper plague. Every 
well in the district, I think, must have entrapped 
some of the insects even if covered over in a 
manner that would have been considered secure. 
Some of the wells must have entrapped a bushel 
or more of grasshoppers. And I remember see- 
ing about a bushel of grasshopper remains taken 
out of one of these wells three years afterwards, 
the water having been in constant family use in 
the meantime. During 1869, some time after 
the plague mentioned, there occurred a case of 
prolonged illness and death, from an affection of 
the bowels called "inflammation," in the family 
using the water of the well that I saw cleaned 
out. The victim was a man thirty-five years of 
age, and the case occurred in late summer. 
Merely as an observer, I afterwards thought that 
the condition of the water was at least a contrib- 
utory cause, without which the case might not 
have terminated fatally. 

As an example of instances that have occurred, 
19 



29O STALK-FOOD DYSPKPSIA. 

and of the recurrence of which we are not 
always free from unforeseen danger, I quote 
from the San Francisco Call of August 2J and 
28, 1895, the two items following: — 

"La Porte, Ind., August 26. — Three hundred persons 
were mysteriously poisoned at a Lutheran church festi- 
val held yesterday at Tracy, this county, where one thou- 
sand people had congregated to pay religious reverence 
on the occasion. 

"Those stricken suffered the most terrible agony, entire 
families succumbing to the strange disorder, the tortures 
of which were only alleviated after the arrival of phy- 
sicians. 

* 'The symptoms of poisoning developed in most cases 
immediately after dinner, but last night and to-day there 
were numerous additions of victims to the fated list." 

"La Porte, Ind., August 27. — The mysterious poison- 
ing of the three hundred persons at the Lutheran Mission 
festival at Tracy, Sunday, was caused by drinking water 
which was contaminated, but from what cause is un- 
known. The sufferers are in a fair way to recover, and it 
is not believed there will be any deaths." 

17. The purity of water, in respect of animal 
and vegetable remains, becomes of the greatest 
importance in the tropics. Whatever one's busi- 
ness in the tropics may be, he should attend 
well to the water he drinks. Where* the best 
that can be had is of doubtful quality, it should 
be filtered if convenient, and then by all means 
boiled. There should not be too long an inter- 
val between the boiling and using, else re- 
infection may take place. The day's supply 



ON THK CAUSES. 29I 

should be boiled on the same day, and until used 
it should be kept in clean and closed vessels, and 
in as cool a place as possible. 

According to facts recorded by Dr. Duncan, 
pages 123 to 125, there can be little doubt that 
infected water is about as dangerous to health, 
and even to life, as infected foods. Among sol- 
diers, infected water has caused a great deal of 
bowel complaint, and much loss of life. Ingested 
water infected with dangerous microbian life, 
may be more efficient as a cause of disease than 
when the same amount of microbian life infects 
an ingested quantity of solid food, owing to the 
circumstance that the water at the time dilutes 
the gastric juice, rendering it a less efficient 
germicide for the destruction of the microbian 
life, which may then possibly pass to the in- 
testine. 

18. That foods which are, or have been, in- 
fected with microbian life to such an extent that 
the incidental decomposition is evident to the 
eye, to the nose, and to the tongue, are causes, 
when ingested, of disease and danger, has now 
been clearly enough pointed out, I believe. 
Enough has also been said, in my first essay, of 
the manner in which illness results from the de- 
composition of foods in the stomach and bowel; 
and the effects are not necessarily very different 
when decomposition has to some extent taken 



292 STALE-FOOD DYSPEPSIA. 

place before ingestion. By stale foods, I mean 
also some conditions of foods in which the infec- 
tion is not observable, but is nevertheless infer- 
able. For instance, in the tropics, where one's 
boots would turn green with " mildew " in twenty- 
four hours in a clothes locker, I hold that bread, 
pastries, cooked meats, etc., would become in- 
fected in a few hours anywhere outside of an ice 
chest, even though the infection might not be 
observable to unaided vision, or to the other 
organs of sense. 

So-called fresh butter is infected, because there 
is distributed through its mass a considerable 
decomposing remnant of the milk from which it 
was separated. Sugar, exposed too long in an 
open bowl, serves as a contrivance for accumu- 
lating spores and germs; and although sugar is 
not a medium from which microbian life can 
spontaneously develop, it preserves spores and 
germs for possible development in somebody's 
stomach and bowels. We may distinguish foods, 
in respect of the degree to which they are in- 
fected, as fresh, stale, and decomposing. There 
is, under ordinary circumstances, little danger of 
people eating foods in which decomposition is 
plainly evident to the senses. But danger lies in 
the use of stale foods, in which no decomposition, 
nor even infection, is evident to the senses. Some 
examples to be cited presently will show this. 



ON THE CAUSES. 293 

Foods that are fresh and sound, are not exempt 
from infection by dormant spores or 'germs, at 
least to a minimum extent, as I have said at the 
beginning of this essay. The mouth itself is in- 
fested with microbian life. So that even when 
freshly sterilized foods are ingested, they can not 
reach the stomach without becoming infected on 
the way. But whenever any harm results from 
this minimum of infection, it is the fault of the 
stomach itself, or of its owner, as we shall see. 

19. During health, the stomach has the power 
of producing within itself an acid fluid known as 
the gastric juice. Only a small amount of gastric 
juice is present in the stomach when empty of 
food ; but on the ingestion of foods, it appears in 
the amounts required, just as saliva appears in 
the mouth to the extent required. Normally all 
foods that enter the stomach are soon permeated 
by the gastric juice. 

Now, in a person of good health, the gastric 
juice is normally a sufficiently powerful disinfect- 
ant of the foods that are taken in. It is an effi- 
cient sterilizing agent, a powerful germicide, So 
that the microbian life that enters the stomach 
along with the foods is, under ordinary circum- 
stances, destroyed. Even those specific microbes 
to which infectious diseases are attributed, are 
destroyed by the gastric juice. For example, we 
are told that the microbes of typhoid fever, of 



294 STALE- FOOD DYSPEPSIA. 

cholera, and of tetanus (locked jaw), die in less 
than one-half hour in normal gastric juice. 

Ordinarily the sterilizing efficiency of the gas- 
tric juice seems not to be impaired by being 
diluted with the amounts of liquid (if not cold) 
that are ingested with the foods. That digestion 
goes on perfectly when eating and drinking of 
hot fluids are simultaneous, is the best evidence 
that the two may properly go together. 

It may happen on voyages, expeditions, etc., 
that one has no choice but to subsist on foods of 
faulty condition. It is then well, especially if 
bowel complaints are occurring in the party, to 
allow the gastric juice to retain its utmost effi- 
ciency as a germicide, or sterilizing agent, and 
not to dilute it with drinks. Accordingly the 
drinking: would be done with the greatest decree 
of safety half way between meals. This would 
be found quite easy after twenty-four hours' trial 

20. Other workers on this line of inquiry seem 
always to have overlooked the circumstances 
and conditions upon which efficient digestion 
depends. It is not strange, therefore, that much 
experimenting has not conclusively determined 
the truth of the statements I have just made on 
the germicidal property of the gastric juice. My 
statements are based on the grounds of circum- 
stantial evidence; and, of course, I am glad to 
find that experimental research is tending very 



ON THE CAUSES. 295 

strongly to the same conclusion that the circum- 
stances indicate. The eminent bacteriologist, 
William H. Welch, says : u If we were to rely 
exclusively upon the results of experiments in 
the test-tube on the germicidal action of the acid 
gastric juice, particularly the very acid juice of 
the dog, we should consider this action a formid- 
able obstacle to the passage of many living bac- 
teria into the intestine." 

It has been determined, for example, that per- 
sons can get typhoid fever and cholera only when 
their intestines have become infested with the 
specific microbes of these diseases. It has also 
been determined that these particular microbes 
die in less than one-half hour in normal gastric 
juice. It may therefore be concluded that the 
passage of the infecting microbes to the intestine 
is due to some inefficiency of the stomach's 
function. 

But any one with a stomach in good working 
condition might get these diseases from drinking 
cold water infected with the specific microbes. 
The cold water, for a time after its ingestion, 
would so dilute the gastric juice as to render it 
less efficient as a germicide. 

That those who attend to the sick of infectious 
diseases, in hospital wards or elsewhere, do not 
themselves become victims is probably due to 
some extent to the germicidal power of the 
gastric juice. 



296 STALE-FOOD DYSPEPSIA. 

It must be as difficult for those who attend to 
numbers of the sick of infectious diseases to 
escape infection as it would be for the pistil of 
a flower to escape the pollen of the stamens. 

21. Almost every case of infectious disease 
runs a part of its course before treatment is 
begun, during which time the infected discharges 
from the patient gain access to the air; and 
whether transported by flies, utensils, hands, 
clothing or bedding, or, in a dried state, drifted 
about by currents of air, the specific spores and 
germs gain access to the foods and drinks in 
quantities quite sufficient for infecting purposes. 
Even after the case is professionally conducted 
after the most approved theoretical plan, the 
safeguards employed are absolutely inefficient 
for the protection of those who are in necessary 
attendance upon the sick. The alleged segrega- 
tion, isolation, and disinfection do not achieve 
the results aimed at. There still remains a great 
difference, as usual, between what they are in- 
tended to do and what is actually accomplished 
by them. 

When persons are so situated that specific 
disease-producing microbes unavoidably enter 
their stomachs, and such persons do not become 
victims of the disease, it must be chiefly due to 
the germicidal power of the gastric juice. And 
this accounts for the exemption of most of those 



OX THE CAUSES. 297 

who, in attendance upon the sick, are exposed 
to the dangers of infection. 

It remains to be determined whether the 
immunity of such persons from disease is not 
due to the good working condition of their 
stomachs; and whether it is not due to some 
functional inefficiency of their stomachs that 
some attendants fall victims to the disease. 

When stomach digestion is incomplete, we 
may assume that stomach disinfection is incom- 
plete; and where the one altogether fails, the 
other will fail also. 

22. Of the gastric juice, on which digestion in 
the stomach wholly depends, "the quantity 
secreted in man in the twenty-four hours has 
been calculated at from thirteen to fourteen 
litres/' about fourteen quarts, a very liberal 
provision for thorough work on the part of the 
stomach, an efficient protection against the 
microbian invasion of the inner man. "The 
presence of food in the stomach causes a copious 
flow of the gastric juice," so that this fluid is 
always present when food is, both for digestion 
and for sterilizing purposes. 

But this is true only of the stomach which is 
performing its functions properly and vigorously; 
and there are many stomachs with which this 
is far from being the case too much of the time. 
On account of the ills they have, dyspeptics are 
yet liable to others they know not of. 



298 STALE FOOD DYSPEPSIA. 

It is in the stomach of the dyspeptic, as we 
have seen him in the first and second, and will 
presently see him again in this third essay, that 
the disease germ escapes the destruction which is 
its normal fate, and survives to multiply its kind, 
to continue its work, decomposing foods that 
fail of digestion, and recomposing poisons in 
their stead. Not only in the stomach, but they 
are permitted to pass to the intestines to have 
their own way so far as they find material for 
the purpose; for the digestive fluids of the intes- 
tines, the bile and pancreatic juice, have but 
little if any germicidal power. 

We have seen, in the first essay, that the cir- 
cumstance of monotonous diet may cause the 
stomach to reduce its action very much, and 
sometimes almost or quite stop it. In the second 
essay we have seen that the stomach's action 
may be stopped entirely by the diversion of diges- 
tive energy for working purposes. And we can 
easily understand that when the stomach's action 
is much diminished, or suspended, and the supply 
of gastric juice does not appear promptly enough, 
or in quantity enough, any microbian life in- 
troduced will inevitably, not only continue its 
work of destruction of the food with which it is 
ingested and the construction of the incidental 
poisonous by-products, but will become much 
more vigorously active in the stomach than be- 



ON THE CAUSKS. 299 

fore ingestion, owing to the much more favora- 
ble conditions of heat and moisture in the 
stomach than generally obtain outside of it. 

We see two conditions then under which in- 
fected foods are particularly unsafe. Both these 
conditions may prevail among soldiers — monot- 
onous diet of stale or otherwise faulty foods; 
the excessive appropriation of energy for forced 
marching, or other excessively fatiguing work. 
The bowel complaints that are so destructive to 
armies on campaign duty are here held to be 
due to indigestion, which itself is due to monot- 
onous diet, diversion of energy, or stale and in- 
fected foods. 

23. Generally, when a person is sick, he feels 
no requirement for food, and feels unable to ex- 
ert any force. He suspends work; even his lo- 
comotion and his thinking and talking may be 
suspended, for all these involve the expenditure 
of energy. 

Coincident with a sick man's disinclination to 
take food, there is a corresponding inability to 
digest it. And it seems that any food taken in 
excess of his felt requirement for it, will also be 
in excess of his power to digest it. 

It is a mischievous custom, this urging sick 
persons to eat in spite of any feeling to the con- 
trary; and to this custom is due much indiges- 
tion superimposed upon the ills the patient 



300 STAI.E-FOOD DYSPEPSIA. 

already has. Not only is there repugnance to 
the quantity, but also, often, to the kinds and 
qualities of foods imposed upon patients. The 
custom is bad and productive of dyspepsia when 
the food is in good condition, and all the more 
harmful is it when foods are stale. 

The sick room is generally a warm place, and 
in it we often see remnants of foods kept for a 
whole day, or a whole night, which should by 
all means be kept in some cooler place outside. 
Milk and meat broths which have been in the 
sick room even two hours, at a temperature of 
seventy degrees Fahr., more or less, should not 
be trusted in the stomach of a patient. There is 
much feeding of stale foods in the sick room, and 
much harm is done, and the patient's term of ill- 
ness is prolonged, or his chances of recovery are 
diminished thereby. 

24. Between vigorous health and absolute 
prostration by disease there are many degrees of 
illness. There occur many cases of illness with- 
out prostration — many cases in which the person 
may still be able to remain at his duty. In such 
cases, however, there is a diminished capacity for 
work. There is less muscular and less mental 
energy available for work; and there is the same 
degree of depression of the working efficiency of the 
various organs of the body — notably of the digest- 
ive apparatus. Although a man is still at his post 



ON THE CAUSKS. 30I 

of duty, if he is ill, duty is extra hard. There is a 
diminished desire for food, and a corresponding 
decline of the power of digestion. 

It may be difficult to explain, but it is an ob- 
vious fact none the less, that cases of reduced 
digestive efficiency are often met with. They 
constitute a class of persons in w r hom digestion 
is good enough for all purposes so long as all the 
conditions of good digestion are strictly main- 
tained. Such persons can not commit the errors 
discussed in my first and second essays without 
suffering. Nor can they commit the error of in- 
gesting stale or infected foods without suffering 
Of this class of cases thus liable to suffer from in- 
digestion, there are many who, by virtue of cir- 
cumstance if not by choice, are consumers of 
foods that are stale or infected. And when for 
such offenses they suffer enough to require pro- 
fessional relief, they constitute the class whom I 
call the stale-food dyspeptics. 

25. My classification in this essay, as in the 
two essays preceding, is made wholly with ref- 
erence to cause. 

Foods that are stale or infected, serve as the 
causes of the ills in the cases considered in this 
essay. The ills themselves may differ as much 
as the ingested substances differ. The ills may 
be very slight, or they may be fatal. In numer- 
ous instances the particular case is one of stale- 
food poisoning instead of indigestion. 



302 STALK- FOOD DYSPKPSIA. 

1 have spoken of the depressed state of health 
as a condition upon which the operation of a 
cause of additional illness will sometimes depend. 
To be more specific, I consider the reduced effi- 
ciency of the digestive processes, especially the 
reduced amount of gastric juice produced during 
the depressed state of health in general, as the 
condition upon which depends the operation of 
stale food as a cause of indigestion. This pre- 
disposing depression of health is sometimes evi- 
dent only from the circumstances of the case, 
namely, that the one or more items of the per- 
son's food, which are causes of his indigestion, 
have generally not caused him any trouble on 
the many former occasions of their use, and that 
some other persons use of the same foods at the 
same times, and do not in any manner suffer for 
doing so. 

To put my subject now into a more practical 
and concrete form, and to illustrate the bearings 
of what has so far been said in this essay, I will 
present a selection of representative cases, with 
such comment as may be necessary. 

26. While serving as medical officer on a 
passenger steamship during the earlier part of 
my professional career, I was confronted one day 
with the task of treating a case of diarrhea. 
The patient was the second mate. I employed 
such means as are recommended in the books. 



ON THE CAUSES. 303 

Each effort to cure resulted in temporary benefit 
only. The patient was on his feet at his duty 
every alternate watch of four hours day and 
night. After five days of unsuccessful attempts 
on my part, and a considerable decline in the pa- 
tient's strength, I concluded that the usual reme- 
dies were useless in that case, and I began seri- 
ously to look for the cause of the diarrhea in 
this man. I considered first his diet. He ate in 
the "officers' mess room." About fifteen others 
ate there also. A very few of these men were 
on duty every alternate four-hour watch; others 
were on duty four hours, and off duty eight 
hours. A few were on duty in the daytime 
only. The table was set at or near the hours of 
four, eight and twelve, day and night — six times 
in twenty-four hours. The table was well sup- 
plied, and it did not occur to me to suspect or 
object to any item of food that this man ate, or 
that was on the table. At the hours of eight 
and twelve at night, and four in the morning, the 
table was set with cold dishes, but with hot tea 
or coffee. During the daytime most of the foods 
came direct from the stove; but there were al- 
ways same cold dishes, such as meats, breads, 
pies, cakes, the cooking or baking of which 
might have been done four, eight, twelve or more 
hours previously. And so of the cold dishes with 
which the table was exclusively set three times 
each night. 



304 STALE-FOOD DYSPEPSIA. 

At the time this case occured we were in 
tropical latitudes. The weather was warm, the 
air was moist. Fungoid growths found their 
best conditions for development. Our unused 
boots turned more or less green in our lockers. 
And there was a general tendency for every- 
thing not in actual use to get moldy. The 
human skin was constantly moist with perspira- 
tion, and some were itching and scratching, and 
it really seemed as if some fungoid vegetation 
was appropriating our skins as soil for its 
growth. 

What we felt we called prickly heat; techni- 
cally it is called lichen tropicus. It also occured 
to me that no microscope was necessary to prove 
that microbian life must have infested every 
item of food on the table of the officers' mess 
room that had not recently come from the stove, 
and to such an extent that actual decomposition 
must have made at least a vigorous beginning, 
even if not necessarily evident to the eye or the 
nose. 

Roast beef, for example, hot and fresh from 
the oven, was served on the cabin tables at five 
o'clock dinner. The intentionally large rem- 
nant of the same was served as cold roast beef 
on the officers' table every four hours until used 
up. Of other items not fresh from the stove 
were bread, pies, cakes; any and all of which, 



ON THE CAUSES. 305 

in such a climate, must become stale and infected 
in a few hours, not to mention twenty-four 
hours and more as the times of exposure of some 
of the foods used. 

It was a fact that the second mate's health had 
not been for some weeks of the most vigorous 
quality; it was concluded that his digestion was 
proportionately inefficient, and that, the cold 
dishes being thoroughly infected by microbian 
life, the decomposing changes, already actually 
begun, continued in the stomach and made too 
much progress before sterilization by the gastric 
juice was accomplished. It was assumed that 
some one or more of the decomposition products 
served as purgatives and caused the diarrhea. 
This may not have been the, whole truth of the 
case, but the diarrhea immediately stopped when 
the patient's food was sterilized. He was simply 
directed to eat nothing but what had very 
recently come from the stove, and if there 
were things on the table that he wanted 
which had not come very recently from the 
stove, he was to have them well heated on a plate 
in the oven before using them. All the bread he 
used was either absolutely fresh, or it was 
toasted to order for him in the oven. The treat- 
ment therefore consisted only of the sterilization 
by heat of everything he ate. It was an abso- 
lutely complete and prompt success. Three 
20 



306 STALE-FOOD DYSPEPSIA. 

years later I had a case, a third mate, under 
circumstances precisely similar to those of the 
case just cited, except that no time was lost in 
finding the cause and applying the remedy and 
obtaining prompt and complete relief. 

27. A child two years of age, previously in 
perfect health, seemed to feel unwell during 
afternoons and evenings, complained of pain in 
the abdomen, ate less than usual, was cross, 
irritable and peevish, whereas it had usually been 
cheerful and lively. This had been the case for 
three weeks, during which time the child had 
grown perceptibly thinner. There was no 
specially definable or namable illness discover- 
able on examination of the child y but, on looking 
into the circumstances of the case, the cause was 
easily determined. The milk supply came to 
the family in the early morning; it came from a 
dairy about forty miles from the city, on the 
previous evening, and I suppose it was no worse 
than other milk that is delivered in large cities. 
This child had of this milk at meal times and 
between meals, and had a last drink of it previous 
to being put to bed in the early evening. 

With some difficulty the mother was induced 
to give none of this milk to the child later than 
at the noon meal, and to let the child use it 
only sparingly at noon. By noon this milk was 
considered suspiciously stale, and later than noon 



OX THE CAUSES. 307 

it was regarded as undoubtedly stale and in- 
fected and as being the cause of the child's ill 
health. Until noon it was considered safe 
enough, though by no means first rate. 

Within a single day the child resumed its 
accustomed cheerfulness. After a few weeks, 
milk was again used as before, with illness again 
resulting. It was again restricted according to 
directions, with immediate recovery of health 
and speedy recovery of the child's accustomed 
weight. The results confirmed the opinion that 
the case was one of stale-milk dyspepsia. 

28. From an interior town, in a rather warm 
part of the state, was brought a girl aged sixteen 
years, extremely thin but of large frame for that 
age. According to the collective opinion of a 
dozen doctors, this was a case of hysteria. She 
had been in an utterly disabled condition for two 
years, excepting a temporarily improved condi- 
tion for two months half a year previous to her 
coming to the city. 

She had been an irregular sufferer since ten 
years of age, and was always out of school one- 
fourth of the time on account of her illness. 

When this case came to my house she could 
not walk alone. She had a little strength in the 
forenoon and could then feed herself, but in the 
afternoon could not raise and hold a glass of 
water to her lips. She shed an unnecessary 



308 STALE-FOOD DYSPEPSIA. 

flow of tears occasionally for the simple reason 
that she was powerless to restrain them. When 
I learned that hysteria was the title acquired by 
this case, I concluded and asserted that dys- 
pepsia was at the bottom of it, and that I would 
take her for one month at my house, cure her of 
dyspepsia in a very few days, of the dependent 
"nervous" ills also, and restore to her, in the 
thirty days, vigorous digestion, and a proper 
amount of flesh, blood and strength. All which 
Avas accomplished in August, 1894. 

The circumstance that a case is alleged to be 
hysteria is evidence to me that it is a case of 
dyspepsia, with the so-called hysterical manifes- 
tations as dependent phenomena. But before 
I had seen this case, and after I had offered to 
take her, I learned from her mother some facts 
which confirmed my conclusion. The mother 
had long ago been directed to make the girl's 
diet mainly of milk. And she did so; but she 
seemed not to know, and seemed not to have 
been instructed on, the importance of having the 
milk always in a good state of preservation. 
She got her milk supply in the morning. The 
region where she lived was very warm. She 
kept no ice, but suspended the tin of milk in a 
shallow well and hauled it up at various times 
as required during the day. This milk was 
fresh only in the early part of the forenoon, and 



ON THK CAUSES. 309 

stale during the rest of the dav. Milk diet 
under such circumstances, long continued, was 
cause enough for the exceptionally bad condi- 
tion in which this girl was brought to us. Her 
spontaneous improvement, half a year before 
coming to the city, was during the coldest part 
of the year, and coincides with the better condi- 
tion in which milk may easily be kept during 
such weather. 

The treatment of this case consisted in depriv- 
ing the patient of milk altogether for a month, 
and otherwise feeding her just as we would have 
done had she been a vigorous girl of sixteen in 
perfect health, except that everything she ate and 
drank was fresh. In much less than a week her 
tongue resumed its natural condition and color, 
her foul breath disappeared, her bowels moved 
unaided, and for the first time in six months she 
resumed her menses — all without drugs. 

29. A storekeeper had been suffering ten 
days from acute dysentery. It was found on 
inquiry that he had during this time been daily 
eating a moderate amount of what he called 
"old English cheese.'' No other item of his 
accustomed food being suspected, he was re- 
quired to abstain entirely from that cheese, 
whereupon he immediately recovered his health. 

30. From the San Francisco Chronicle (date 
not preserved) : — 



310 stale- food dyspepsia. 

"a fatal drink." 

' 'Little Walter Warren, of East Oakland, died yesterday 
from the effects of drinking ice-cream soda. The boy 
was delicate, and drank the ice-cold soda after a meal. 
The stomach became chilled, digestion ceased and the 
child died in convulsions.," 

The condition or quality of this fatal drink 
seems not to have been taken into account. The 
chilling of the stomach and the temporary stop- 
ping of digestion do not kill. That the child 
died in conmrtsions was a circumstance which 
alone should have cast strong suspicion on the 
cream as the source of the poison which caused 
the convulsions and death. 

31. From the San Francisco Chronicle, July 
5, 1892: 

"ice cream's deadly work." 

"Columbus, Ind., July 4. — Last night at a church 
festival at Hope, twelve miles from here, forty people 
were seriously poisoned by eating the ice cream that was 
served, among whom were two prominent physicians." 

From an editorial of the same paper, July 6: — 

"Why the attempt to spread the gospel in such a por- 
tion of the country as Indiana should be hampered and 
prevented by such untow r ard obstacles, is one of those 
mysteries which are past finding out. There can be no 
doubt but that the church festival was for some laudable 
purpose, though its precise object is not stated, and to the 
feeble eye of human understanding there is no assignable 
cause for the sudden illness of forty people who were en- 
gaged in a worthy enterprise. Ordinary ice cream, such as = 



ON THE CAUSES. 311 

is made at home or purchased from the confectioner, is not 
likely to produce such effects. . . .It has happened 
that more than once at church festivals and Sunday school 
picnics and fiestas of that kind the same phenomenon 
has been witnessed, but the cases are not numerous 
enough as yet to deduce a general rule from them. 
Whether there be any occult connection between the 
character of the entertainment and the dangerous effects 
of the ice cream, or whether the misadventure may be 
accounted for by purely natural causes, who can say?" 

Had a few of these forty people been killed, 
the coroner's jury would most likely have found, 
by retracing the history of that cream from the 
hour of its ingestion to the moment of its pro- 
duction from the cow at the one or more dairies 
or farms that furnished it, or donated it, that it 
was at the time of freezing in a bad state of 
preservation. 

The dairy methods, the dairy men, the church 
committee, the makers, custodians, and dispen- 
sers of the ice cream, the local conditions of the 
weather at the time, etc., should all be carefully 
considered on such occasions. In reference to 
the milk, cheese and cream involved in the last 
five cases cited (three from personal observation, 
and two of public notoriety), I repeat, for pur- 
poses of explanation, from Dr. Wm. H. Welch, 
that "in certain cases of poisoning with milk, 
cheese, and ice cream, Vaughan has demon- 
strated a toxic ptomain which he calls tyrotoxi- 
con." 



312 STALE-FOOD DYSPEPSIA. 

32. A Frenchwoman, having symptoms of dys- 
pepsia and suffering from hysteria, was found 
to have for a long time been using claret wine 
that was suspected to be of inferior quality. 
This wine was the only thing suspected as caus- 
ing the dyspepsia and the dependent hysteria. 
The use of the wine was stopped and the dys- 
pepsia and hysteria immediately subsided also. 
Two years later the same woman was again ill 
with the hysterical element most conspicuous. 
It was found that she had recently resumed the 
use of the claret. The claret was again stopped, 
with complete recovery as the prompt result. 

Another Frenchwoman, who was an habitual 
but moderate consumer of the same quality of 
claret wine, had also a child at the breast. The 
mother was well, but the child was a considera- 
ble sufferer from indigestion. Nothing else be- 
ing reasonably suspicious as a cause, the claret 
was stopped, and the child recovered as promptly. 

Prof. E. W. Hilgard says that a great deal 
of claret that is inferior, from the fact of having 
been badly made, contains a substance called 
mannite. To many persons this mannite is so 
purgative as to prevent their use of the qualities 
of claret containing it. If the acetification of 
claret is not certainly a cause of digestive disturb- 
ance, the presence of mannite sometimes is. 
And if these cases of dyspepsia were not due to 



ON THE CAUSES. 313 

deteriorated beverages, they may have been due 
to inferior ones. (Good claret, or any good 
wine, may also cause dyspepsia in the manner 
explained in the first essay.) 

33. From the San Francisco Chronicle, June, 
1892: — 

"poisonous shell-fish." 

"Jean Pierre Berger died yesterday at the Gailhard 
Hotel, of which he recently became the lessee, as a re- 
sult of poisoning caused by eating shell-fish, some say 
mussels and others crawfish." 

"Mr. Berger was well known in the French colon}*, 
having resided in California about twenty years. He was 
originally a cook." 

There being no question as to the wholesome- 
ness of such shell-fish as people are accustomed 
to eating, and as to the safety of anybody that 
eats them under ordinary circumstances, it only 
remains to conclude that in such cases as this 
the shell-fish were in a faulty condition. The 
danger in such cases is all the more apparent 
from the circumstance that this man had been a 
cook, and would have been expected to be able, 
when that was possible, to recognize dangerous 
faults in foods. We can understand such cases 
very much better after learning from Welch 
that- 

"Many articles of food afford excellent nutritive media for 
the growth of a number of species of pathogenic (disease 
producing) bacteria, and this growth may occur without ap- 



314 STALK-FOOD DYSPEPSIA. 

preciable change in the appearance or taste of the food. The 
danger from infection from this source comes into consid- 
eration for uncooked or partly cooked food, and for food 
which, although it may have been thoroughly sterilized 
by heat, is allowed to stand a considerable time before 
it is used." 

34. From the San Francisco Chronicle, Octo- 
ber 15, 1894: — 

"poisoned by mussels." 

"Albert Gotzsch, the German who was poisoned by 
eating mussels last week at Fort Ross, has recovered. 
He is at the German Hospital, where he was taken im- 
mediately after the poison manifested itself. It will be 
remembered that Gotzsch's wife died from eating the 
mussels. Of late several people have eaten mussels found 
near Fort Ross, to their sorrow. More than seven cases 
of poisoning of this character have been reported within 
the last few months." 

And more cases have occurred than have been 
reported. 

Even though the circumstances seem strongly 
to indicate that a person has been poisoned by 
the mussels he has eaten, it may not be true that 
the mussels were poisonous. In at least some of 
the cases of alleged mussel poisoning that oc- 
curred in the summer of 1894 in the vicinity of 
San Francisco, the suspected mussels were be- 
yond all doubt fresh, and there seems to be a 
better prospect of finding the cause of the poison- 
ing by looking into the condition of the victim at 



ON THE CAUSES, 315 

the time, and the circumstances under which he 
ate the mussels. 

The fresh mussel is, however, under some cir- 
cumstances, not above suspicion. Intelligent 
and long experienced dealers of the fisherman's 
produce contend that it is unsafe to eat mussels 
that are taken from the rocks at low tide during 
warm weather and the full moon. There is, very 
likely, some truth in this view of the fisherman, 
but whatever it may ultimately prove to be, is 
yet to be determined. 

In the cases of twelve persons who suffered 
from eating mussels in this vicinity during the 
summer of 1894, it is learned that the mussels 
were fresh, but were gathered under the very 
conditions which the fisherman regards as un- 
safe. For at least forty-eight hours the north 
wind had been blowing, and the air had been un- 
usually warm day and night. The moon was 
full, and the tide was low. That the water was 
also unusually warm was shown by the very un- 
usual phenomenon, for this locality, of phosphor- 
escence during the previous night, and also on 
the same night that the mussels were eaten. 

These twelve who suffered from eating mus- 
sels were of a party of fourteen, there having 
been two of the fourteen who did not suffer at 
all. Two were dangerously ill, and ten were 
variously ill in less dangerous degrees. 



316 STALE-FOOD DYSPEPSIA. 

Of the two who escaped illness, it has been 
learned that they were free from faults of diges- 
tion. The two who were dangerously ill have 
been seen. Both are in occupations which 
predispose to capriciousness of the digestive 
function and favor the development of disorders 
of digestion. Both these men, according to 
their own statements, were subject to disorders of 
digestion. 

From these same two gentlemen it was learned 
that during an afternoon they went eight miles 
on foot over a very hilly road; that this laborious 
tramp of three hours was followed by a good 
appetite and a good dinner at about seven 
o'clock, and at nine o'clock by a supper exclu- 
sively of mussels, and by going to bed a half 
hour later. 

With a good dinner at seven o'clock, they 
could not have been hungry at nine, and the 
mussels at that hour must have been in excess 
of the bodily requirement in the way of food. 
The error of overeating was therefore committed 
and would have been trivial in the case of any- 
body but a dyspeptic, and at any other time than 
just before going to bed, and for any other 
than those highly nitrogenous foods which are 
so capable of speedy decomposition into deadly 
poisonous products when for any cause digestion 
is inefficient. 



ON THE CAUSES. 317 

35. From the San Francisco Chronicle, July 
30, 1891: — 

"POISONOUS meats." 

u On Saturday last, a butcher at Loomis, Placer County, 
threw upon the local market some pressed corn beef. It 
was nice to look at and pleasant to taste, but it came 
nearly ending the earthly careers of a number of the 
residents of the great fruit belt; in fact, one death has 
already resulted therefrom , and others may occur. 

"Among those who partook of the poisonous meat 
were A. Free, wife and child. The child died yesterday, 
and Mr. and Mrs. Free were not out of danger at last 
accounts. 

"E. V. Maslin . . . ate of the meat and was seized 
with most violent cramps. He was in great agony for 
several hours, but finally recovered. 

"G. W. Ellery was similarly attacked soon after eating 
the meat. He fell in a dead faint from sudden and severe 
pain, striking upon and somewhat disfiguring his face." 

"Mr. Owen and wife, of Penryn; Mr. Mason and wife, 
of Newcastle; Colonel Grove and wife, of Loomis; and 
four young Englishmen of the citrus colony are all down 
from the effects of partaking of the pressed beef, and it is 
not unlikely that other fatalities will be reported." 

I learned, from one who is named in this 
extract, that this corned beef was prepared by 
the butcher who retailed it, that it was not 
canned. 

The arrest of the butcher took place, but was 
not followed by prosecution. (See quotation 
from Welch, page 313.) On this case of meat 
poisoning I sought an explanation from my 



3lS STALK-FOOD DYSPEPSIA. 

butcher. He is a German. The butcher's art 
where he learned it was subject to some strict 
legal regulation, pertaining not only to the con- 
dition of his meats when dispensed, but also to 
the sanitary condition of his animals before 
slaughtering. This butcher was of the opinion 
that this corned beef was made from an animal 
that was diseased at the time it was slaughtered. 

I am told of a case in which about fifty 
miners became ill just after eating of fresh beef; 
but, during the five or six hours just preceding 
slaughter, the animal had been hurriedly and 
harassingly driven, and the weather was very 
warm. 

The action of the animal had been extraordi- 
nary and prolonged, its incidental tissue wastes 
were great in proportion. Elimination of these 
poisonous wastes, these ashes of animal combus- 
tion, had not had time to occur. The processes 
of excretion may even have been earlier sus- 
pended more or less completely, for want of 
energy to keep them going, because the animal's 
all and utmost energies were required for 
locomotion. The excessive amount of retained 
wastes rendered the flesh poisonous to the men 
who ate it. 

36. From the San Francisco Chronicle \ March 
3> 1893:— 



ON THK CAUSES. 319 

"THE RESULT OF EATING A MUSHROOM." 

"There are two unfortunate people residing at 258 
Clementina Street. In one instance, that of the husband, 
the torture may be said to have almost become bear- 
able; but in the other, that of the wife, death could have no 
sting more agonizing than the suffering which she is 
undergoing. 

"The sufferers are Gabriel Lagrave and wife, who ate 
tw r o mushrooms which they gathered in Golden Gate 
Park. They spent last Sunday morning there in a most 
domestic manner, taking along with them a well-filled 
lunch basket and the Frenchman's indispensable bottle 
of claret. 

"On their return trip they discovered the mushrooms 
and ate them that evening stewed in olive oil. There is 
where the trouble and strangeness of the whole thing be- 
gan. . . . Monsieur Lagrave was the first to feel the 
effect of his evening meal. Certain rumblings in his 
insides, pains in hi? joints and elsew r here, accompanied 
by effective nausea, appeared on Monday. On Tuesday 
he was ill, and to this day he has not quite recovered. 

"Madame Lagrave did not begin to feel her discomfort 
until late on Tuesday night. Then she began to ex- 
perience the terrific pains which she is still suffering. 
Nearly all her bodily functions have ceased and her 
extremities have turned cold and blue." 

The physician who attended these cases, 
speaking to a reporter, on mushrooms, said: — 

"If culled in damp weather they are likely to be poi- 
sonous. They are no better if they are allowed to wait 
over too long before being cooked, and when once 
cooked they are positively dangerous when warmed over 
to be eaten at another time. In all the physician's state- 
ments he is backed up by his books and medical ex- 



320 STAI^K-FOOD DYSPEPSIA. 

perience. The authorities in most cases give it out that 
all fungi are poisonous, while in some cases the poison- 
ous kind are stated as only the 'toadstools' that grow 
from decayed vegetable matter. 

1 'At any rate, it remains as a sad fact for lovers of the 
succulent mushroom that it will keep him guessing some 
time whether or not his pet dish may turn on him after 
having partaken of it, for it frequently occurs that the 
uncomfortable intestinal pains and nausea do not occur 
for several hours, and sometimes three days." 

According to the physician quoted, poisoning 
may result from eating the proper mushroom in 
a bad condition. This, however, according to 
Prof. E. W. Hilgard, is exceptional. The Pro- 
fessor holds that it is generally the zirong mush- 
room that is poisonous. 

37. From the San Francisco Chronicle, July 
27, 1893:— 

"decaying vegetables cause death." 

"San Jose, July 26. — A nine-months-cld child of G. 
W. Condoan, that died recently, has been declared by 
J. W. Wayson, the attending physician, to have been 
poisoned by the odor arising from a lot of decaying fru!t 
in a neighboring drier. The stuff had been covered up 
for a year, and the stench that arose when it was again 
exposed to the air made several adults ill. The child 
died with every symptom of poisoning. A constable, 
under the direction of the supervisors, abated the 
nuisance." 

This was not a case of poisoning by infected 
food, but it is none the less interesting and to the 



on the; causes. 321 

point, for it shows that some of the by-products 
of decomposition are volatile in warm weather, 
and that the same are so powerfully poisonous 
that, even when greatly diluted with the air we 
breathe, one can absorb a fatal dose of them 
through the lining membrane of the lungs and 
air passages. 

LIVE-STOCK POISONING. 

38. In the year 1880, a farmer in San Benito 
County, California, undertook to preserve fodder 
by the method called ensilage. The object was 
to have fodder for use during the dry summer 
and autumn in the fresh green and succulent 
condition in which it was cut in the spring. For 
the purpose of preserving fodder in the green 
state, it is packed immediately after being cut, 
into room-like spaces inclosed by solid concrete 
walls without roof. The top is made like that 
of a haystack, not being protected nor sealed 
itself, but serving to protect and seal up that 
which is beneath it. 

Now ensilage, it seems, can succeed, if at all, 
only where there is a cold season during which 
the preserved fodder is to be used. Even if the 
preservation of green fodder, as such, could be 
successful in California, it is required for use 
during seasons that are either very warm or at 
least not cold. When therefore the silo, or in- 
21 



322 STALK-FOOD DYSPEPSIA. 

closure, is opened, the temperature is such as to 
favor the very rapid growth of fungus upon and 
at the expense of the fodder. Simply stated, 
the fodder would become moldy at a much 
more rapid rate than it would be required for 
use under ordinary circumstances. 

However successful Mr. Green, of San Benito 
County, may have been in preserving his fodder, 
it had not long been unsealed, and had been fed 
but a few days, when something like a dozen 
horses took mysteriously sick and died, at which 
time also the ensilage was observed to be getting 
very musty. Poisoning was the theory, but 
quite another kind was suspected, until Professor 
Hilgard, of the College of Agriculture, on a 
single glance at a moldy specimen of the fod- 
der, at once declared that the moldiness was 
cause enough for the death of the animals to 
which fodder in such condition had been fed. 
The specimen was examined, however, for the 
presence of poison that was suspected to have 
been applied with criminal intent. But not a 
trace was found. 

In this connection it may be stated that 
moldy carrots are poisonous, and stockmen 
dare not feed them for that well-known reason. 

What is known as ergot, or "smutt," on hay 
tends to produce abortion in cows to which hay 
so infected is fed t 



ON THE CAUSES. 323 

Hay infected with "rust" is known among 
horsemen to be dangerous fodder. 

"Smut" and "rust" are examples of very small 
parasitic plants growing upon our cultivated 
cereals and at their expense. And the poison 
of these parasitic growths is in themselves and 
not, as usual, in any by-products of their growth. 

39. From the San Francisco Chronicle, July 
18, 1893:— 

"a mother and three children die from 
poisoning." 

"Nashua, N. H., July 17. — A sad case of mysterious 
poisoning is reported in the family of Theophile Des- 
champs, evidently from something in the food, the nature 
of which is still unknown. The family consisted of father 
and mother and six children. Three children are dead, 
and the mother can not live." 

The science of organic-decomposition poisons 
is still in a rudimentary state of development, 
and that small share of it which has so far taken 
any practicable form in the every-day medical 
practitioner's mind does not yet furnish a satis- 
factory explanation to every case of illness or 
poisoning from infected foods. Hence, cases 
now and then in which poisoning is clearly evi- 
dent, like the one just quoted, are allowed to 
pass unaccounted for. Still less satisfactory is 
the explanation, if any is made at all, when only 
a single life has been lost. A man dies at an age 



324 STALK-FOOD DYSPEPSIA. 

when death is certainly premature, and under 
circumstances which make death a most unex- 
pected and unthought of event, and we read of 
him that " he had been ill for only two days with 
a stomach disorder." 

40. It will be observed that dyspepsia as a re- 
sult of the use of stale food, milk for example, 
may continue for a long time. And it is very 
likely to continue as long as the doctor calls it 
hysteria, as in a case cited. 

Along with stale-food dyspepsia, whether of 
short or long duration, we w T ill find about all the 
various dependent ills that have already been 
sufficiently explained, as also their relation to 
dyspepsia, mainly in the first essay, and also in 
the second. When a plain case of dyspepsia is 
called hysteria, it need not be surprising that 
others should be called nervous exhaustion, or 
heart disease, etc. 

ON THE SUMMER DYSPEPSIA OF YOUNG 
CHILDREN. 

41. Of all sufferers from stale-food dyspepsia, 
the largest and most important group consists of 
that very large number of young children who 
are victims every summer of what is called sum- 
mer complaint y summer diarrhea and cholera 
infantum. These cases are stale-milk dyspep- 
sias. They are almost exclusively diseases of 



SUMMKR DYSPEPSIA OF YOUNG CHILDREN. 325 

cities, and of the summer season. They are 
most numerous where and when the weather is 
very warm and the air is very moist. They 
come with that hot, sultry weather during which 
the fatal sunstroke is a frequent occurrence. 

This summer dyspepsia of young children, as I 
prefer to call it, is present when perishable foods 
are most perishable; it is present when milk is 
not good at the moment of delivery in large cit- 
ies, and dangerously bad too soon after delivery 
to families who do not make diligent and intel- 
ligent use of ice. This must be true of milk, 
even if pure and delivered under the most favor- 
able circumstances that are practicable during 
the warmest months, for example, in New York 
City. More certainly and generally is it true of 
cheap milk delivered in cities to poor people. 
Every farmer's wife knows that there is such a 
thing as sour milk which is not unhealthy, and 
which can be and is used as food, either alone in 
the raw state, or in combination with other 
things to be cooked, as in bread and pastries. 
Nor is the idea of danger associated, in the minds 
of country folks, with the ingestion of sour milk 
from a well-managed dairy. 

But there is something different, and some- 
thing dangerous, about the retrograde change that 
so frequently takes place in the milk after deliv- 
ery in the city during warm weather. On the 



326 STALK-FOOD DYSPEPSIA. 

one hand, in a clean, cool milk-house, the fresh 
milk is exposed in a clean pan, to clean fresh 
air, and a simple acid fermentation takes place, 
with no resulting products that are prejudicial to 
the health of the consumer. On the other 
hand, under entirely different conditions, there 
seems to occur a more complex process of 
change, with resulting products that are not 
only prejudicial to health, but may actually be 
dangerous to life. 

42. In the matter of dyspepsias, physicians 
have attended to the phenomena rather than to 
their causes. The resulting phenomena are nu- 
merous, inconstant and not amenable to any use- 
ful classification, "There are a great many kinds 
of dyspepsia," said a late president of the Medi- 
cal Society of the State* of California. And Dr. 
J. Lewis Smith, of New York City, in a large 
text-book on diseases of children, devotes five 
chapters to diseases of the stomach and bowels 
of infants and children, and uses ten or more 
terms to distinguish what the medical profession 
considers to be as many more or less distinct 
diseases, or diseased conditions. 

In the class of cases under consideration, w T e 
have distinct causes in the infected conditions of 
the foods, and the results are indigestion, with its 
usual varied and numerous phenomena, for all of 
which the general term stale-food dyspepsia is 



SUMMER DYSPEPSIA OF YOUNG CHILDREN. 327 

quite sufficient. But as it may be well and con- 
venient to distinguish the infantile from the 
adult, and to specify in the term the annual city 
visitation, we may designate this class of cases 
as the summer dyspepsia of young children. 

43. It has been well enough established as a 
general fact that the ingestion of stale and in- 
fected foods may cause dyspepsia, and enough 
has elsewhere also been said on the manner in 
which such foods produce illness. My object 
here is simply to show what I hold to be the 
cause of this summer dyspepsia of young chil- 
dren, but not to discuss any of the resulting 
phenomena of dyspepsia itself. 

I will now present some extracts from the 
sixth edition of Dr. J. Lewis Smith's work on 
"Diseases of Children: — " 

In New York City, "fifty -three per cent of the total 
number of deaths occur under the age of five years, and 
twenty -six per cent under the age of one year." 

Making liberal allowance for statistical errors, 
Dr. Smith thinks — 

1 'It may safely be stated that one-fourth of the children 
born in this city die before the age of five years" 
(page 24). 

44. "It is in infancy, and especially in the first year, that 
the use of unwholesome food entails the most serious 
consequences. No artificially prepared food is a good 
substitute for the mother's milk, and hence, artificial 



328 STAINS-FOOD DYSPEPSIA. 

feeding ot the infant, unless under the most favorable 
circumstances, results disastrously. 

1 'In the country, where salubrious air and sunlight con- 
spire to invigorate the system, where a robust constitu- 
tion is inherited, and where cow's milk, fresh and of the 
best quality, is readily obtained, lactation is not so neces- 
sary for the well-being of the infant; but in the city its 
importance cannot be too strongly urged" (p. 27). 

To the "cow's milk> fresh, and of the best qual- 
ity'' is due the bottle-fed country babe's immu- 
nity from the illness which during the warm 
months almost certainly kills the city bottle-fed 
babe, because the cow's milk is not fresh and of 
the best quality in the city. 

45. " The foundlings of cities afford the most striking and 
convincing proof of the advantages of lactation [the ad- 
vantages of fresh, natural milk, I should say]." 

4 'In some cities foundlings are wet-nursed, while in 
others they are dry-nursed, and the result is always 
greatly in favor of the former. Thus, on the Continent, 
in Lyons and Parthenay, where foundlings are w T et-nursed 
almost from the time they are received, the deaths are 
thirty-three and seven-tenths and thirty-five per cent. 
On the other hand, in Paris, Rheims and Aix, where the 
foundlings were wholly dry-nursed, at the date of the sta- 
tistics their deaths were fifty and three-tenths, sixty-three 
and nine-tenths and eighty per cent." "In this city the 
foundlings, amounting to several hundred a year, were 
formerly dry-nursed, and, incredible as it may appear, 
their mortality with this mode of alimentation nearly 
reached one hundred per cent. Now wet-nurses are em- 
ployed for a portion of the foundlings, with a much more 
favorable result" (p. 27). 

"These facts, to which others might be added from the 



SUMMER DYSPEPSIA OF YOUNG CHILDREN. 329 

experience of European cities, show the importance of 
lactation as a means of reducing infantile mortality in the 
cities. What has been stated as regards the results of 
artificial feeding of foundlings is true, in great measure, 
in reference to all city infants" (27). 

"In infancy . . . the mortality is largely increased 
by improper diet, while in childhood the diet is a much 
less common cause of death'' (28). 

46. The non-committal expression, "improper 
diet," so common in the writings and sayings of 
physicians, conveys to a dyspeptic some confu- 
sion and no good. Though the expression may 
circumscribe the truth, patients and parents not 
only utterly and always fail to grasp it, but get 
erroneous and misleading ideas instead. The 
''improper diet" that is so fatal in cities to artifi- 
cially fed infancy, is milk that is stale and infected. 
And "in childhood the diet is a much less com- 
mon cause of death," because stale milk is little 
or no part of it. 

"Indigestion is more common during infancy 
than in any other period of life," says Dr. Smith, on 
page 697. And I will add, because it is the only 
period of life when there is danger of an exclu- 
sive and prolonged stale-milk diet in cities. 

"During the summer months it often happens that an 
infant in the city cannot digest properly any food given 
to it except the mother's milk, and from this results much 
of the infantile sickness and mortality which make this 
season of the year much dreaded by parents" (698). 



330 STALK-FOOD DYSPEPSIA. 

I suggest that in such cases the infant's al- 
leged inability to digest is only apparent on the 
usual superficial examination of the circum- 
stances of the case. And I hold that a more 
comprehensive study will reveal no original fault 
of the infant's digestive apparatus, but it will re- 
veal the fact that the mother's milk is the only 
non-infected (sterile) food that the infant receives; 
whereas the other infant foods, during the sum- 
mer months, among poor or careless people, are 
in such a state of infection that the processes of 
decomposition, after ingestion, proceed in ad- 
vance, and, by their disastrous results (effects of 
the decomposition products on the patient), may 
prevent any digestion from taking place at all. 

47. If the well-known character of city milk, 
in the houses of poor or careless people, during 
the hot months, is borne in mind, the following 
additional extracts from the work of Dr. Smith 
will show plainly enough that it is the infected 
condition of the perishable foods ingested, milk 
chiefly, that is the cause of the summer dyspep- 
sia of young children: — 

"The most common cause of indigestion in the infant 
is artificial feeding. This, in the cities, is productive of 
a great amount of gastric and intestinal derangement and 
disease. The younger the infant, the less frequently does 
it thrive if brought up by hand" (698). 

"In spite of any care, and of any selection of milk or 
other food, there is seldom that healthy nutrition which 
is observed in infants who receive the breast milk." 



SUMMER DYSPEPSIA OF YOUNG CHILDREN. 33 1 

"The 'swill milk' in common use among the poor 
families of this city is totally unfit for the feeding of 
infants" (698). 

"Habitual indigestion is, as might be expected, more 
common and severe in artifically fed infants than in 
those at the breast." 

"In rural localities where children are much of the 
time in the open air, have good constitutions, active 
digestions, and fresh food, dyspepsia is comparatively 
rare, but in large cities, in which the conditions of life 
are so different, its occurrence is common" (700). 

"Dyspepsia often rapidly disappears by hygienic 
measures without the use of medicines*, as by removal 
from the city to the country. . . . 

"In infants, also, marked improvement is often ob- 
served on the approach of the cool and bracing weather 
of autumn and winter" (704). 

"Gastritis, as I have observed it in infants, has been in 
most cases due in great part to the continued use of im- 
proper food. . . . 

"Milk, acid or otherwise unwholesome, farinaceous 
substances; stale or of an inferior quality, and not 
properly prepared, . . . may be specified among the 
causes. 

"Therefore this disease is most common in bottle- 
fed infants, and is comparatively rare in those who re- 
ceive abundant and wholesome breast milk" (705). 

48. "In rural districts infantile diarrhea is not so 
prevalent and fatal as in cities. In the farming sections 
it does not materially increase the death-rate, and it is, 
therefore, not so important a malady as in cities. In 
cities it largely increases the aggregate of deaths. Es- 
pecially fatal is that form of it w r hich is known as the 
summer epidemic, as is shown by the mortuary records 



* Does it ever disappear with the use of medicines? 



332 STALE-FOOD DYSPEPSIA. 

of any large city. Thus, in New York City, during 1882, 
the deaths from diarrhea reported to the health board, 
tabulated in months, were as follows: — 

Under Over 

five years. five years. 

January 34 14 

February 32 ... 15 

March 50 14 

April 50 20 

May c... 72 15 

June 231 19 

July i,533 131 

August 817 149 

September 362 84 

October 195 55 

November 68 31 

December 35 24 

"It is seen that in 1882, in New York City, the deaths 
from diarrhea under the age of five years were greatly 
in excess of the number during the whole period of life 
subsequent to that age" (719). 

Many cases of summer diarrhea linger as 
long as three or four months (July to October) 
and then die, which fact explains the greater 
number of deaths in October than in May (721). 

49. "In their annual report for 1870 the board states: 'The 
mortality from the diarrheal affections amounted to two 
thousand, seven hundred and eighty-nine, or thirty-three 
per cent of the total deaths; and of these deaths ninety- 
five per cent occurred in children less than five years old, 
ninety-two per cent in children less than two years old, 
and sixty-seven per cent in those less than a year old.' 
Every year the reports of the Health Board furnish 
similar statistics, but enough have been given to show 



SUMMER DYSPEPSIA OF YOUNG CHILDREN. 333 

how great a sacrifice ol life infantile diarrhea produces 
annually in this city. 

"What we observe in New York in reference to this 
disease is true also, to a greater or less extent, in other 
cities of this country and Europe, so far as we have 
reports. ... In country towns, whether in villages 
or farm houses, this disease is comparatively unimpor- 
tant, inasmuch as few cases occur in them, and the few 
that do occur are of mild type, and consequently much 
less fatal than in cities" (719-720). 

And there is a corresponding difference in the 
quality of the milk employed in the bottle-feed- 
ing of infants. "Unsuitable food" is frequently 
referred to, but it is never explained in what 
respect the food is unsuitable. No special fault 
is specified. 

50. "The fact is therefore undisputed, and is univer- 
sally admitted, that the summer season, stated in a 
general way, is the cause of this annually recurring 
diarrhea epidemic, but it is not easy to determine what 
are the exact causative conditions or agents which the 
summer weather brings into activity. That atmospheric 
heat does not in itself cause the diarrhea is evident 
from the fact that in rural districts there is the same in- 
tensity of heat as in cities, and yet the summer complaint 
does not occur. The cause must be looked for in the 
state of the atmosphere engendered by heat where un- 
sanitary conditions exist, as in large cities. Moreover, 
observations show that the noxious effluvia with which 
the air becomes polluted under such circumstances con- 
stitute or contain the morbific agent" (721). 

51. Then Dr. Smith, on the same page, cites 
instances of the coincident prevalence of infantile 



334 STALK-FOOD DYSPEPSIA. 

diarrhea and an extremely filthy city atmos- 
phere during warm weather, and assumes, per- 
haps correctly, that the filthy air is or contains 
the cause of the diarrhea. But under the 
filthy conditions detailed by Dr. Smith., one 
cannot find diarrhea among all the "dense popu- 
lation . . . poor, ignorant and filthy in 
their habits/' except among the young children 
The adults are not even unhealthy, but are 
among the healthiest people of the city. While 
some of the men may be out-of-doors much of 
the time, the mothers at any rate get no better 
air than their children. And as in one filthy 
localty "nearly every infant between two ave- 
nues had diarrhea, and usually in a severe 
form, not a few dying," and in another foul 
locality "the summer diarrhea was very preva- 
lent and destructive to human life," the truth as 
to cause may certainly be so far circumscribed 
as to be sought only in the local conditions and 
circumstances of the infant life. 

' 'Every physician who has witnessed the summer 
diarrhea of infants is aware of the fact that the mode of 
feeding has much to do with its occurrence. A large 
proportion who each summer fall victims to it would 
doubtless escape if the feeding were exactly proper." 

52. "In New York City, facts like the following are of 
common occurrence in the practice of all physicians: 
Infants under the age of eight months, if bottle-fed, nearly 
always contract diarrhea, and usually of an obstinate 



SUMMER DYSPEPSIA OF YOUNG CHILDREN. 335 

character, during the summer months. The younger 
the infant, the less able is it to digest any other food than 
breast milk, and the more liable is it therefore to suffer 
from diarrhea if bottle-fed. In the institutions nearly 
every bottle-fed infant under the age of four or even six 
months dies in the hot months, with symptoms of indi- 
gestion and intestinal catarrh, while the wet-nursed of 
the same ages remain well" (724). The wet-nursed get 
fresh milk; that is the fundamental difference. 

* 'The second summer is the period of greatest danger 
to infants because most infants in their second year are 
table-fed, while in the first year they are wet-nursed. 
Such facts, with which all physicians are familiar, show 
how important the diet is as a factor in causing the sum- 
mer complaint'' (724). 

53. There is great difficulty "in a large city in obtain- 
ing proper diet for young children, especially those of 
such an age that they require milk as the basis of their 
food. Milk from cows stabled in the city, or having a 
limited pasturage near the city, and fed upon a mixture 
of hay with garden and distillery products, the latter 
often predominating, is unsuitable. ... If the milk 
be obtained from distant farms where pasturage is fresh 
and abundant — and in New York City this is the usual 
source of supply — considerable time elapses before it is 
served to customers, so that, particularly in the hot 
months of July and August, it frequently has begun to 
undergo lactic acid fermentation when the infants receive 
it. That dispensed to families in the morning is the 
milking of the previous morning and evening." 

"The use of this milk in midsummer by infants under 
the age of ten months frequently gives rise to more or 
less diarrhea." 

"The ill success of feeding with cow's milk has led to 
the preparation of various kinds of food which the 
shops contain, but no dietetic preparation has yet ap- 



33 6 STALE-FOOD DYSPEPSIA. 

peared which agrees so well with the digestive function 
of the infant as breast milk, and is at the same time 
sufficiently nutritive." 

54. "In New York City, improper diet, unaided by the 
conditions which hot weather produces, is a common 
cause of diarrhea in young infants; for at all seasons we 
meet with this diarrhea in infants who are bottle-fed; 
but when the atmospheric conditions of hot weather and 
the use of food unsuitable for the age of the infant are 
both present and operative, this diarrhea so increases in 
frequency and severity that it is proper to designate it the 
summer epidemic of the cities" (725). 

" Before the New York Foundling Asylum was estab- 
lished, the foundlings of New York, more than a thou- 
sand annually, were taken to the almshouse on Black- 
well's Island and consigned to the care of pauper women, 
who were mostly old, infirm and filthy in their habits 
and apparel. . . . 

"When assigned to duty in the almshouse, this service 
being at that time a branch of the Charity Hospital, I 
was informed," says Dr. Smith, "that all the foundlings 
died before the age of two months; only one was pointed 
out as a curiosity which had been an exception to the 
rule. The disease of which they perished was diarrhea, 
and this malady in the summer months was especially 
severe and rapidly fatal." 

55. Dr. Smith says, on page 739: "Care should be 
taken to prevent fermentation in the food before its use, 
since much harm is done by the employment of milk or 
other food in which fermentative changes have occurred 
and which occur quickly in dietetic mixtures in the hot 
months." 

This, written in 1885, seems rather mild at 
the present time (1896) when it has become a 
matter of popular knowledge that such changes 
in nitrogenous foods render them poisonous. 

The "much harm is done" of 1885, should be 
changed in 1896 to fatal poisoning may result. 



SUMMER DYSPEPSIA OF YOUNG CHILDREN. 337 

Every case of stale-food dyspepsia is a case of 
stale-food poisoning when the infected food was 
of the nitrogenous class. And if all ordinary 
illnesses from infected foods continue to be called 
cases of indigestion, then the more severe and 
dangerous illnesses from infected nitrogenous 
foods may in general be called cases of stale- 
food poisoning. 

That dreaded infantile illness known as cholera 
infantum is only stale-food poisoning, poisoning 
almost exclusively by badly-infected milk. And 
here I may quote again from Welch that "in 
certain cases of poisoning with milk, cheese, and 
ice cream, Vaughan has demonstrated a toxic 
ptomain which he calls tyrotoxicon." 

56. Cholera infantum is the most severe form of in- 
fantile diarrhea. It has been so called "from the vio- 
lence of its symptoms, which closely resemble those of 
Asiatic cholera. . . . It is characterized by frequent 
stools, vomiting, great elevation of temperature, and 
rapid and great emaciation and loss of strength. It 
commonly occurs under the age of two years. It some- 
times begins abruptly, the previous health having been 
good; in other cases it is preceded by the ordinary form 
of diarrhea" (735). 

A fatal termination often occurs in two or 
three days; and sometimes after a sickness of less 
than one day (735-737). Cholera infantum and 
ordinary summer diarrhea are continuous one 
with the other (739). The distinction is one of 
degree and not of kind. 



338 STAI.K-FOOD DYSPEPSIA. 

"The duration of true cholera infantum is short. It 
either ends fatally, or it begins soon to abate and ceases, 
or it continues, and is not to be distinguished in its sub- 
sequent course from an attack of summer diarrhea be- 
ginning in the ordinary manner" (739). 

All physicians of experience agree on sending 
these cases to the country (741). ''Many are 
the instances" of cases apparently hopeless going 
to the country and returning in the autumn in 
perfect health (741). 

57. Although more evidence can be adduced 
for the same purpose, it has now, by the help of 
Dr. Smith's work, been clearly enough shown 
that the circumstances of the summer dyspepsia 
of young children, point much more strongly to 
the infected condition of the foods employed, 
especially the infected milk, as the cause, than to 
anything else probable. 

The foregoing discussion indicates so plainly 
what the means of prevention and treatment of 
stale-food dyspepsia must necessarily be that 
nothing need be added on the manner of con- 
ducting such cases. Stale food is the cause. 
All the phenomena which constitute the disease 
are results purely; they require no treatment, 
and no possible advantage is to be gained by 
attempting treatment of them. When the cause 
is removed, the disease will disappear itself, and 
will generally not require more than twenty- 
four hours to do so. 



